BL: Butler Library, Columbia University
CC: Coca-Cola corporate archives
CCCB: Central Coca-Cola Bottling Company records, Virginia Historical Society
CCP: Papers of Charles Harvey Crutchfield, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina
CED: Committee for Economic Development
CEDA: Committee for Economic Development archives
CWP: Papers of Charles E. Wilson, Anderson University Archives
DBP: Papers of F. Donaldson Brown, Hagley Museum and Library
FFP: Papers of Franklin Florence, Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester
FPP: Papers of Frances Perkins, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University
GROH: Gerard Reilly Oral History, Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives, Cornell University
GRP: Papers of Gerard Reilly, Historical & Special Collections, Harvard Law School Library
HQP: Papers of Helen Quirini, M. E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives, University at Albany, State University of New York
ILIR: Files from the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations Library, University of Illinois Archives
IUE: Records of the International Union of Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers, Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University
JBP: Papers of Joseph M. Bryan, University Archives and Manuscripts, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
JCPL: Jimmy Carter Presidential Library
JSP: Papers of Joseph N. Scanlon, Archives, University of Pittsburgh
KC: Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives, Cornell University
KHC: Kodak Historical Collection, Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester
LBP: Papers of Lemuel R. Boulware, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania
MFOH: Marion Folsom Oral History, Columbia Center for Oral History, Columbia University
MFP: Papers of Marion B. Folsom, Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester
MPRF: Mark Pendergrast Research Files, Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University
PHP: Papers of Paul G. Hoffman, Harry S. Truman Library
PRP: Papers of Philip D. Reed, Hagley Museum and Library
RBFS: Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Online Project, Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester
RGGP: Papers of Ronald G. Greenwood, Special Collections, Nova Southeastern University
RHGP: Papers of Robert H. Guest, Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College
RHP: Papers of Ralph Hayes, Western Reserve Historical Society
RWP: Papers of Robert Woodruff, Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University
SA: Scharchburg Archives, Kettering University
SMA: Schenectady (N.Y.) Museum Archives
TSC: Technology and Society Collection, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library
UAW: United Auto Workers records, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University
UE: United Radio, Electrical and Machine Workers papers, Labor Archives and Research Center, San Francisco State University
WRP: Papers of William E. Robinson, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library
“Rewire”: “We Need to ‘Re-Wire’ the Labor Market” by Byron Auguste and Tyra Mariani, Medium, updated Nov. 24, 2015. “Right now”: “The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment” by Jim Clifton, The Chairman’s Blog, Gallup, Feb. 3, 2015. The US Department of Labor Statistics reported the 5.5 percent jobless rate for February 2015 on March 6.
Would connect: See “The Wildly Ambitious Future of the Job Search” by Rick Wartzman, Fortune, March 19, 2015. “There are trillions”: “The Untapped $140 Trillion Innovation for Jobs Market” by David Nordfors, TechCrunch, Feb. 21, 2015.
Far too much: To fans of Uber, the company provides freedom and flexibility suited to today’s economy, a readily available source of work for people looking to supplement their other income, a potential huge social good by pulling cars out of congested and smog-filled urban areas, and a service that customers love. To critics of the company, it is accelerating a trend toward jobs that are poor paying, unpredictable, and insecure. See “Is Uber Good or Bad for Society? The Debate Continues” by Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 13, 2015; “Uber’s Business Model Could Change Your Work,” New York Times, Jan. 28, 2015; “Can Ride Apps Really Solve America’s Traffic Woes?,” Time, April 25, 2016; “In the Sharing Economy, No One’s an Employee” by Gillian B. White, The Atlantic, June 8, 2015; “Who Is Your Uber Driver (and What Does He Want?), Wall Street Journal, May 20, 2015: “Uber-nomics: Here’s What It Would Cost Uber to Pay Its Drivers as Employees,” Fortune, Sept. 17, 2015. Pay well: “Uber Data and Leaked Docs Provide a Look at How Much Uber Drivers Make,” BuzzFeed, June 22, 2016. The Buzzfeed story says that company data suggests drivers overall in three major US markets—Denver, Detroit, and Houston—earned less than $13.25 an hour after expenses in late 2015. Also see “Uber to Pay $20 Million to Settle Claims It Misled Drivers,” Reuters, Jan. 19, 2017. Loyalty from: In 2016, Uber did recognize a new worker association in New York through which drivers could receive a range of portable benefits and protections. See “Uber’s Major Step Forward for Workers” by Natalie Foster, CNN.com, May 25, 2016. Accounts for: “The Rise and Nature of Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States, 1995–2015” by Lawrence F. Katz and Alan B. Krueger, March 29, 2016. Also see “Uber Is Not the Future of Work” by Lawrence Mishel, The Atlantic, Nov. 16, 2015. For an analysis of how the platform economy may be more, not less, important, see Davis, The Vanishing American Corporation, 172–179.
“The precariat”: See “In the Sharing Economy, Workers Find Both Freedom and Uncertainty,” New York Times, Aug. 16, 2014. Standing’s book, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, was published in 2011. “Archie Bunker vote”: McCrohan, Archie & Edith, Mike & Gloria, 189–191.
10 percent: “Wage Stagnation in Nine Charts” by Lawrence Mishel, Elise Gould, and Josh Bivens, Economic Policy Institute, Jan. 6, 2015. Data are for compensation (wages and benefits) of private production and nonsupervisory workers from 1973–2013. The 90 percent figure covers the same group from 1948–1973. Carrying the data through 2015, the increase in compensation goes to 11 percent. See “The Productivity-Pay Gap,” Economic Policy Institute, updated Aug. 2016. Also see “Politics In Real Life: What Wage Stagnation Looks Like For Many Americans,” “Morning Edition,” National Public Radio, May 5, 2016; “For Most Workers, Real Wages Have Barely Budged for Decades” by Drew DeSilver, Pew Research Center, Oct. 9, 2014. For a different analysis, see “Wage and Salary Growth in the United States: Average Americans Made Steady Progress for Two Generations, Until the Last Decade” by Robert J. Shapiro, NDN, Oct. 2012.
Earns less: “Few Rewards: An Agenda to Give America’s Working Poor a Raise,” Oxfam America and Economic Policy Institute, June 22, 2016. Make enough: This is according to Harvard economist Larry Katz. See “Sizing Up Hillary Clinton’s Plans to Help the Middle Class” by Eduardo Porter, New York Times, July 14, 2015. Also see “The Hidden Lives of America’s Poor and Middle Class,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Jan. 5, 2016. Stopped looking: The figure was 12 percent as of June 2016. See “The Long-Term Decline in Prime-Age Male Labor Force Participation,” White House Council of Economic Advisers, June 2016; “The Missing Men” by Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, June 27, 2016; “The U.S. Labor Force’s Guy Problem: Lots of Men Don’t Have a Job and Aren’t Looking for One,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 21, 2016.
To retire on: “An Aging Society Changes the Story on Poverty for Retirees” by Eduardo Porter, New York Times, Dec. 22, 2015; “Pension Participation, Wealth, and Income: 1992–2010” by Alicia H. Munnell, Wenliang Hou, Anthony Webb, and Yinji Li, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, July 2016; Reich, Saving Capitalism, 126; “The Champions of the 401(k) Lament the Revolution They Started,” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 2, 2017. “The Biggest Reason Workers Don’t Save for Retirement,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 29, 2015; “Our Ridiculous Approach to Retirement” by Teresa Ghilarducci, New York Times, July 22, 2012; “Who Killed the Private Sector DB Plan?” by Ilana Boivie, National Institute on Retirement Security, March 2011. Push more: “2016 Employer Health Benefits Survey,” Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, Sept. 14, 2016; “How Companies Are Quietly Changing Your Health Plan to Make You Pay More,” Washington Post, Sept. 14, 2016; “Employers Push Costs for Health on Workers,” New York Times, Sept. 2, 2010; Hacker, The Great Risk Shift, 13–14, 137–143. Also see “The Slowdown in Employer Insurance Cost Growth: Why Many Workers Still Feel the Pinch” by Sara R. Collins, David Radley, Munira Z. Gunja, and Sophie Beutel, Commonwealth Fund, Oct. 26, 2016. Notably, even after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, a majority of nonelderly Americans still receive their health coverage through an employer-based plan. See “Repealing Obamacare Is Just a Diversion of This Bigger Healthcare Crisis” by Rick Wartzman, Fortune, Feb. 10, 2017.
Unequivocally good news: Well, maybe not to everyone. See “Census Report of Big Jump in Income Is a Little Too Good to Be True” by Gary Burtless, Brookings Institution, Sept. 16, 2016. Median household income: “Range of Evidence Shows Clear Gains for Middle Class,” New York Times, Sept. 14, 2016. 4 percent below: “The Bad News Is the Good News Could Be Better” by Eduardo Porter, New York Times, Sept. 14, 2016. Even after: “My Comments on CBPP’s Census Data Press Call Today” by Jared Bernstein, On the Economy, Sept. 13, 2016.
Corporate profits: After peaking in late 2014, corporate earnings declined through the second half of 2015 and 2016. But they remained at a historically high level. See “US Economic Indicators: Corporate Profits in GDP,” Yardeni Research, Sept. 21, 2016. Not been distributed: “The U.S. Economy Is Doing Only Half Its Job” by Jan W. Rivkin, Harvard Business Review, Dec. 17, 2015; “The Mystery of the Vanishing Pay Raise” by Steven Greenhouse, New York Times, Oct. 31, 2015; “Corporate Profits Grow and Wages Slide” by Floyd Norris, New York Times, April 4, 2014; “Bash Brothers: How Globalization and Technology Teamed Up to Crush Middle-Class Workers” by Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, Aug. 13, 2013; “Corporate Profits Are Eating the Economy” by Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, March 4, 2013; Reich, Saving Capitalism, 83–85. Like it was: In 1970, the bottom 99 percent of workers claimed 77 percent of corporate income. By 2010, that had fallen to 67 percent. (Data provided to the author by Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute.) Also see “Rising Corporate Concentration, Declining Trade Union Power, and the Growing Income Gap: American Prosperity in Historical Perspective” by Jordan Brennan, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, March 2016; “What Do We Know About the Labor Share and the Profit Share?” by Olivier Giovannoni, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, Working Paper No. 805, May 2014. Who’ve reaped: “Profits Without Prosperity” by William Lazonick, Harvard Business Review, Sept. 2014; “Stock Buybacks: From Retain-and-Reinvest to Downsize-and-Distribute” by William Lazonick, Center for Effective Public Management at Brookings, April 2015; “As Stock Buybacks Reach Historic Levels, Signs That Corporate America Is Undermining Itself,” Reuters, Nov. 16, 2015; “Yes, Short-Termism Really Is a Problem” by Roger Martin, Harvard Business Review, Oct. 9, 2015; Reich, Saving Capitalism, 100–103. For a counterview, see “Are Share Buybacks Jeopardizing Future Growth?” by Tim Koller, McKinsey & Co., Oct. 2015. Very high end: From 1979–2012, the top 1 percent saw their real annual wages go up 154 percent. The bottom 90 percent saw an increase over that span of 17 percent. See “Why America’s Workers Need Faster Wage Growth—and What We Can Do About It” by Elise Gould, Economic Policy Institute, Briefing Paper No. 382, Aug. 27, 2014. Also see “Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States” by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 22945, Dec. 2016. They find that “even after taxes and transfers, there has been close to zero growth for working-age adults in the bottom 50 percent” of the income ladder since the 1970s. Can’t count on: “Big Mac Test Shows Job Market Is Not Working to Distribute Wealth” by Eduardo Poerter, New York Times, April 21, 2015; Reich, Saving Capitalism, 133–138.
“Since feudalism”: Geoghegan, Only One Thing Can Save Us, 23. An important caveat to concerns about inequality is that economic standards of living have still improved over time. Among children born in the 1970s and 1980s, 84 percent had higher incomes (even after adjusting for inflation) than their parents did at a similar age. See “Social Mobility: A Promise That Could Still Be Kept” by Richard V. Reeves and Isabel Sawhill, Brookings Institution, July 29, 2016.
Officially announce: Trump declared in June 2015, Sanders in May, and Hillary Clinton in April. Find its expression: See “In Places With Fraying Social Fabric, a Political Backlash Rises,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 15, 2016; “Hillary Clinton and the Populist Revolt” by George Packer, New Yorker, Oct. 31, 2016; “Why Are Politicians So Obsessed With Manufacturing?” by Binyamin Appelbaum, New York Times, Oct. 4, 2016; “The Two Americas Behind Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders” by Mike Barnicle, Daily Beast, March 6, 2016; “Trump’s America” by Charles Murray, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 12, 2016; “In ‘Brexit’ and Trump, a Populist Farewell to Laissez-Faire Capitalism” by Eduardo Porter, New York Times, June 28, 2016. “Forgotten men”: Text of Donald Trump’s victory speech, CNN, Nov. 9, 2016. “I want him”: “White, Working-Class and Angry: Ohio’s Left-Behind Help Trump to Stunning Win,” The Guardian, Nov. 9, 2016. Also see “How Trump Won: The Democratic Party’s Abandonment of the Working Class Cleared the Space for Trump” by Jedediah Purdy, Jacobin, Nov. 11, 2016; “How the Obama Coalition Crumbled, Leaving an Opening for Trump,” New York Times, Dec. 23, 2016; “What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class” by Joan C. Williams, Harvard Business Review, Nov. 10, 2016; “How Corporate America Led Donald Trump to Victory” by Rick Wartzman, Fortune, Nov. 10, 2016. As clear as the working-class storyline has been to many of those analyzing Trump’s victory, the issue is undeniably complicated. Myriad other factors, including race and culture, also played a major part. On this, see “Everything Mattered: Lessons From 2016’s Bizarre Presidential Election” by David Roberts, Vox, Nov. 30, 2016. Also see “The Dangerous Myth That Hillary Clinton Ignored the Working Class” by Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, Dec. 5, 2016.
“The pretense”: “Why Good News/Bad News For the Middle Class?” by Hedrick Smith, Reclaim the American Dream blog, Sept. 15, 2016. This is not at all to say that the private sector is disconnected from politics. Indeed, in the eyes of many political scientists, the business lobby has tilted the rules of Washington heavily in its favor and against the interests of the middle class and working class. See Hacker and Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics, 41–72; 289–306; Reich, Saving Capitalism, 168–202; Hacker, The Divided Welfare State, 8; “Why Politics Is Failing America” by Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter, Fortune, March 9, 2017.
Gas had been: “How Minimum Wage Lost Its Status As a Tool of Social Progress in the U.S.” by Rick Wartzman, Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2001. Little to do: See “Here’s Who Gets Left Behind Corporate America’s Quest to Do Good” by Rick Wartzman, Fortune, Oct. 27, 2016.
Ten or twelve: As noted in “Pension Plans—Private or Public?” by William Haber, Michigan Business Review, May 1950; “Job Turnover, Wage Rates, and Marital Stability: How Are They Related?” by Avner Ahituv and Robert Lerman, Urban Institute, Nov. 2004. Most of this turnover occurred when people were early on in their careers. Importantly, Heckscher (White-Collar Blues, 24) notes that “at least through the 1970s, half of the men in the U.S. workforce ended in jobs that effectively offered lifetime security.” Also see “Employee Tenure Trends, 1983–2014” by Craig Copeland, ebri.org Notes, Employee Benefit Research Institute, Feb. 2015. Positive feature: Recently, economists have become concerned that younger workers are, in fact, not switching jobs enough—a sign of a lack of dynamism in the US labor market compared with thirty or forty years ago. See “Understanding Declining Fluidity in the U.S. Labor Market” by Raven Molloy, Christopher L. Smith, Riccardo Trezzi, and Abigail Wozniak, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, BPEA Conference Draft, March 10–11, 2016; “Job-to-Job Transitions in an Evolving Labor Market” by Canyon Bosler and Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau, FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Nov. 14, 2016.
Job security: Hacker, The Great Risk Shift, 61–85; Gosselin, High Wire, 109–140; Uchitelle, The Disposable American, 212; “Employment Stability in the U.S. Labor Market: Rhetoric Versus Reality” by Matissa Hollister, Annual Review of Sociology, 2011; “Job Loss and the Fraying of the Implicit Employment Contract” by Kevin F. Hallock, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 23, No. 4, Fall 2009; Henry Farber’s essay “Job Loss and the Decline in Job Security in the United States” in Abraham, Spletzer, and Harper, Labor in the New Economy, 223–262. Farber’s analysis found that job tenure and the incidence of long-term employment declined sharply in the US private sector between the 1970s and 2008. In contrast, however, job tenure and the incidence of long-term employment increased in the public sector over the same period. Looking at a shorter timeframe, some say that job security has actually increased since the 1990s. See “The U.S. Labor Market Is Far More Stable Than People Think” by J. John Wu and Robert D. Atkinson, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, June 2016. Tremendously volatile: Hacker, The Great Risk Shift, 27–33; Gosselin, 79–108; “Paychecks, Paydays, and the Online Platform Economy: Big Data on Income Volatility,” JPMorgan Chase Institute, Feb. 2016.
Slow economic growth: See especially Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 566–639. Also see “The Great Productivity Puzzle” by John Cassidy, New Yorker, Aug. 10, 2016: “We’re in a Low-Growth World. How Did We Get Here?” by Neil Irwin, New York Times, Aug. 6, 2016. Next boom: Brynjolfsson and McAfee, The Second Machine Age, 40–124. Also see “Silicon Valley Doesn’t Believe U.S. Productivity Is Down,” Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2015. Left with nothing: Ford, Rise of the Robots, 1–128; “Jobs Threatened by Machines: A Once ‘Stupid’ Concern Gains Respect” by Eduardo Porter, New York Times, June 7, 2016; “A World Without Work” by Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, July/Aug. 2015. “The Future of Employment; How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?” by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, Working Paper, Oxford Martin School, Sept. 17, 2013; “Silicon Valley Is Right—Our Jobs Are Already Disappearing” by Andrew Yang, Quartz, Feb. 1, 2017. New avenues: “25 Million New Jobs Coming to America, Thanks to Technology” by Rick Wartzman, Fortune, Jan. 15, 2016. Also see Bessen, Learning by Doing, 101–134; “Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation” by David H. Autor, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 29, No. 3, Summer 2015.
To be realized: In October 2016, wages rose 2.8 percent from a year earlier, the fastest growth since 2009. See “The Economic Recovery Is Finally Bringing Pay Raises,” FiveThirtyEight, Nov. 4, 2016; “Wage Growth Is Galloping Higher at Its Fastest Pace in Nearly Eight Years,” Bloomberg, Nov. 15, 2016. “Failed to generate”: Bernstein, The Reconnection Agenda, 50. 70 percent: “The Real Reason Your Paycheck Is Not Good Enough” by Rick Wartzman, Fortune, Aug. 24, 2016; Bernstein, The Reconnection Agenda, 44.
Policy prescriptions: “The Real Reason Your Paycheck Is Not Good Enough” by Rick Wartzman, Fortune, Aug. 24, 2016. For the full list, see Bernstein, The Reconnection Agenda, 330–334.
“Decisive aerial engagement”: Tucker, World War II at Sea, 110. Mareth Line: Entries for March 16 and March 20, 1943, at World War II Today (ww2today.com); “Montgomery Drives Forward,” Associated Press dispatch, published in The Evening Independent of St. Petersburg, Fla., March 26, 1943; “Fact File: Battle of Mareth Line,” BBC—WW2 People’s War—Timeline. Krakow ghetto: Entry for March 13, 1943, at World War II Today (ww2today.com). Akikaze: Felton, Slaughter at Sea, 87–93.
Nineteen American businessmen: Minutes of the Industrial Advisory Board of the CED, March 29, 1943, MFP. Found it unseemly: For the group’s response to these concerns, see “Plan Postwar Jobs—Now,” CED, 1943, PHP.
Tens of billions of dollars: From June 1940 through September 1944, $175 billion in prime military contracts were let to more than 18,500 companies, according to Koistinen, Arsenal of World War II, 296. Bread lines: Walter Reuther invokes this image in “The Challenge of Peace,” International Postwar Problems, Volume 2, April 1945. 30 million: Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, 14. “Sweep the land”: Schriftgiesser, 14.
War Production Board: Koistinen, 445–497. National Resources Planning Board: Regarding the board’s report After Defense, What? see Wasem, Tackling Unemployment, 22–23; Schriftgiesser, 13. Senate’s Special Committee: Schriftgiesser, 48. Dozens of other: In 1944, the Twentieth Century Fund’s organizational directory of Postwar Planning in the United States listed thirty-three federal agencies, according to Bailey, Congress Makes a Law, 10. United Auto Workers: “Reuther Challenges ‘Our Fear of Abundance,’ New York Times Magazine, Sept. 16, 1945; Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 220–225. US Chamber: Wasem, 139–140; Bailey, 139–143. National Association of Manufacturers: Bailey, 132–138; “Second Report of the Postwar Committee of the National Association of Manufacturers,” December 1943, KC. Even Pabst Brewing got into the act, as it celebrated its centennial with a contest aimed at “stimulating individual American thinking” on how to spark postwar employment. See “The Story of the Pabst Postwar Employment Awards” (econ.duke.edu/uploads/assets/Conferences/HOPE%20Spring%202012/Curiosities/Pabst.pdf). The top two winners were both renowned economists: Herbert Stein claimed the $25,000 first prize, and Leon Keyserling took the $10,000 second prize. An analysis of the contest entries is presented in Fitch and Taylor, Planning for Jobs. Also see Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, 99–100.
“Enlightened capitalism”: “The CED—A Progress Report,” Tide (magazine), Jan. 31, 1947, PHP. Also see Delton, Racial Integration in Corporate America, 88–89; Judis, The Paradox of American Democracy, 96–98. Liberal conservatism: Schriftgiesser, 70. Paul Hoffman wanted the CED to defy political labels, saying, “I think it is very important that we as a group think of ourselves not as ‘right,’ ‘left,’ ‘conservative,’ or ‘radical’ but as ‘responsible’” (CED Board of Trustees meeting minutes, April 18, 1947, MFP). Hoffman is also quoted in Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, 85. “Most dangerous men”: K. T. Keller, then president of Chrysler Corp., said this of Paul Hoffman, Beardsley Ruml, and Eric Johnston during an address at the Economic Club of Detroit. See Walton, Business and Social Progress, 78; Schriftgiesser, 135; Schriftgiesser, 31–32, points out that many of those on the political left also mistrusted the CED. Chamber or the Manufacturers: Mizruchi, The Fracturing of the American Corporate Elite, 27, 57; Harris, The Right to Manage, 108–109; Domhoff and Webber, Class and Power in the New Deal, 111–112; Bernstein, The Turbulent Years, 663; Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands, 13–15. Most historians see the Chamber as the more moderate of the two organizations through the 1930s and ’40s—though not as moderate as the CED. “The common good”: “The Economics of a Free Society” by William Benton, Fortune, Oct. 1944, PHP. Also quoted in Mizruchi, 85. The Nation ran: This was Keith Hutchison’s “Everybody’s Business” column for Oct. 27, 1945. Also see Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, 84–87.
Big bosses: Lists of the CED’s leadership can be found in Schriftgiesser, 227–229; Mizruchi, 41. Other executives among the CED’s founders were from Jones & Lamson Machine Co., General Foods, Holland Engraving, American Rolling Mill, George A. Hormel & Co., Brown-Johnston Co., Scott Paper, Champion Paper & Fibre Co., and Quaker Oats. Other patents: IEEE Global History Network. “Bottled horse piss”: Pendergrast, For God, Country and Coca-Cola, 144.
“A moral obligation”: “How to Create a Labor Shortage: An Interview by Boyden Sparks with Charles F. Kettering,” reprinted from the Saturday Evening Post, May 30, 1936, SA. “Brains and effort”: “Stabilization of Employment and Income” by M. B. Folsom, reprinted from The Conference Board Management Record, Feb. 1939, KHC. Jacoby (Modern Manors, 28) points out that, in addition to Kodak, a number of companies “consciously pursued” stabilization programs, including Columbia Conserve, Hills Brothers, Dennison Manufacturing, and Procter & Gamble. There was, however, an “Achilles’ heel of stabilization: its inability to shield workers from cyclical, as opposed to seasonal, instability” (“Employers and the Welfare State: The Role of Marion B. Folsom” by Sanford M. Jacoby, The Journal of American History, Vol. 80, No. 2, Sept. 1993). Also see “Planning Annual Employment,” proposed remarks before the A.S.M.E. Management Conference by J. F. Teegardin, KHC; “Next Steps Toward Security of Work and Wages,” remarks at the University of Michigan Conferences on Industrial Relations, 1947–1948, by J. F. Teegardin, KHC; “Eastman Kodak,” undated typescript by A. G. Walker, TSC. “Furnishing of jobs”: From an address made on April 2, 1943, before a meeting of Georgia Industries and the Georgia Academy of Science, CC. “Dynamic logic”: This is what journalist Frederick Lewis Allen called it in his 1952 book, The Big Change. Other business leaders, such as Edward Filene and Henry Dennison, promoted the same idea (Mizruchi, 51). Five-dollar day: Brinkley, Wheels for the World, 162–163. “Sell my refrigerators”: As quoted in Drew Pearson’s widely syndicated newspaper column, “The Washington Merry-Go-Round,” Nov. 22, 1944.
Launched the CED: Schriftgiesser, 20–29. Also see “Agenda for June 9, 1942 meeting with the Secretary of Commerce,” MFP; “Report of Meeting with the Secretary of Commerce,” June 9, 1942, CEDA; Board of Trustees meeting minutes, Sept. 11, 1942, CEDA; “Address of Secretary of Commerce Jesse H. Jones to the Conference of the Committee for Economic Development,” April 14, 1943, PHP. Bid to combine: Schriftgiesser, 6–7; “Speech Before the Citizens Board of the University of Chicago” by William Benton, Oct. 26, 1943, PHP. “Hatch a hen egg”: CED Executive Committee meeting minutes, Feb. 8, 1943, MFP. Also quoted in Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, 84.
Called to order: Minutes of the Industrial Advisory Board of the CED, March 29, 1943, MFP. Switchgears: See Prince’s biography at the IEEE Global History Network. Prince’s papers can be found at SMA. GE was widely seen: Schriftgiesser, 16. Also see “An Approach to Postwar Planning” by GE’s R. P. Gustin and S. A. Holme, Harvard Business Review, Summer 1942.
“Nothing mystic”: Quoted in “The Most Important Management Problem You May Ever Face… Planning and Preparing for Post-War Operation,” Fowler Manning & Co., 1943, PHP. “Denotes totalitarianism”: “American Planning and Civic Annual,” American Planning and Civic Association, 1942.
“Develop overproduction”: March 24, 1943, letter from Prince to Marion Folsom, MFP. “Take over by default”: July 12, 1943, letter from Prince to Marion Folsom, MFP. “The crackpots”: Aug. 3, 1943, letter from Prince to Paul Hoffman, MFP.
Attended by officials: Minutes of the Industrial Advisory Board of the CED, March 29, 1943, MFP. 1,000 requests: May 9, 1943, letter from C. Scott Fletcher, the CED’s director of field development, to Marion Folsom, MFP. “A radical change”: Lee and Samuels, The Heterodox Economics of Gardner C. Means, 333.
“Merchant of ideas”: “American Corporatism: The Committee for Economic Development, 1942–1964” by Robert M. Collins, The Historian, Feb. 1, 1982. Urged managers: “Planning the Future of Your Business,” Handbook No. 1 for Industry, prepared by Association of Consulting Management Engineers for CED, PHP.
Massive field operation: Figures are from Schriftgiesser, 37, 41. 58 million: “Postwar: Limited Objective,” Time, Sept. 6, 1943. The CED later pulled back slightly, saying that “a satisfactory high level of employment” would be “53 to 56 million civilians at work” (“Toward More Production, More Jobs and More Freedom,” CED, 1945, PHP). For a critical analysis of this target, see Pierson, Essays on Full Employment, 79–80. “Intolerable”: “Postwar: Limited Objective,” Time, Sept. 6, 1943.
“Simple-minded man”: “Postwar: Limited Objective,” Time, Sept. 6, 1943. “Hope you didn’t”: June 4, 1943, letter from Sloan to Hoffman, MFP.
More than peace: In 1943, a Gallup poll found that, when asked what the country’s greatest problem would be from 1945 to 1949, 58 percent of Americans said “jobs and economic readjustment” and 13 percent said “peace” (Wasem, 39). “We believe in”: “Industry’s Plan for Postwar Prosperity,” Reader’s Digest, June 1943.
Manipulate the levers: Schriftgiesser, 102, 114, 224.
Social legislation: Harris, 182. Allen (The Big Change, 252) suggests that by the mid-1940s, those in the business mainstream were no longer reflexive “Washington-haters.” A similar point is made in Mizruchi, 42–43. First introduced: Bailey, 46–47; Wasem, 72–73. Economic Bill of Rights: Bailey, 41; Wasem, 24–25. “Utopian objective”: Bailey, 140. Still, Chamber president Eric Johnston—a liberal presence during his tenure—made sure that no representative of the organization actually testified against the bill. By 1946, Johnston was pushed out of the Chamber by its more conservative membership (Mizruchi, 56). Also see Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, 120–122. “State socialism”: Bailey, 134. Substantial corporate backing: Harris, 196; Jacoby, Modern Manors, 232. “Russian spawn”: Bailey, 144–145. The full diatribe by Samuel Pettengill was also published under the headline “Ancestry of a Bill” in the Sept. 4, 1945, edition of the Lawrence Journal-World of Kansas.
Vastly watered down: Wasem, 142–143; Bailey, 225; Uchitelle, 43. The law did establish certain federal structures for economic planning, including the president’s Council of Economic Advisers and the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. Survival was due: Judis, 68; Harris, 183; Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise, 33; Mizruchi, 57–58.
“I like the phrase”: Schriftgiesser, 96–97. Interestingly, Marion Folsom had a different view regarding the idea of full employment, reportedly saying, “A job for every person willing and able to work is absolutely incompatible with the free enterprise system” (Wasem, 28). “The crucial role”: Schriftgiesser, 97.
“Government fiat”: Remarks by Ralph Hayes at R. W. Woodruff Dinner, Dec. 6, 1949, RWP. “The basic floor”: MFOH. Also see “Employers and the Welfare State: The Role of Marion B. Folsom” by Sanford M. Jacoby, The Journal of American History, Vol. 80, No. 2, Sept. 1993. Also see Hacker, The Great Risk Shift, 45–46; Hacker, The Divided Welfare State, 98–99. Klein, For All These Rights, 94–95. The private sector: Klein, in her introduction (xv–xxix), lays out this idea cogently. Also see Davis, The Vanishing American Corporation, 117, 124; Hacker, The Great Risk Shift, 7, 43; “The Politics of Economic Security: Employee Benefits and the Privatization of New Deal Liberalism” by Jennifer Klein, Journal of Policy History, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2004; Hacker, The Divided Welfare State, xii, 6–7, 13–16. Like Klein, Hacker (The Divided Welfare State, 11, 16, 64) does point out, however, that the picture is complicated because of an array of public tax and regulatory provisions that help to support all of this “private social welfare.” “Lend a helping hand”: Sloan, Adventures of a White-Collar Man, 148.
Altruistic: Julius Rosenwald of Sears put it this way: “Don’t imagine that anything we do for our people… is done from philanthropic motives—not in the least. Whatever we do for our employees we do because we think it pays, because it is good business” (Jacoby, Modern Manors, 26). Take root: Miller, The Tyranny of Dead Ideas, 64–66; Mizruchi, 31; Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, 81. “Seedbed for”: “A Program for Business in Post War Planning,” an address before the National Retail Furniture Association, Nov. 11, 1943, CC.
“Whole-hearted interest”: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 67. Also see Heckscher, 6. Codified the expectations: “Decentralization at the General Electric Company, from World War II to 1971,” a doctoral dissertation by Ronald Greenwood, University of Oklahoma Graduate College, 1972. GE first published these objectives in 1954.
Distant relationship: Cappelli, The New Deal at Work, 51–55; Jacoby, Employing Bureaucracy, 31. “Putting-out” system: Cappelli, 52. Workers in-house: Cappelli, 55–56; Jacoby, Employing Bureaucracy, 32. “Anyone been fired”: Jacoby, Employing Bureaucracy, 37. Also quoted in Cappelli, 57; Peter Cappelli’s essay “Market-Mediated Employment” in Blair and Kochan, The New Relationship, 79. Greenhouse, The Big Squeeze, 105. Typically unemployed: Jacoby, Employing Bureaucracy, 38–40. Bribe your boss: Jacoby, Employing Bureaucracy, 40.
Social contract emerging: See Cappelli, 64.
Squeezed the trigger: Brayer, George Eastman, 523. Had given America: From “Milestones” on the Kodak corporate website (kodak.com/corp/aboutus/heritage/milestones/default.htm). Kodak camera: This was introduced to the market in 1888. Difficult and painful: Brayer, 517.
“It wasn’t right”: “Eastman Tells About His Plan of Profit Sharing for Employees,” New York Times, Feb. 4, 1923. Also cited in Jacoby, Modern Manors, 61.
Kodak Welfare Fund: “Eastman Kodak Industrial Relations,” undated typescript, KHC; “Beginning With a Welfare Fund,” undated typescript, KHC; “George Eastman,” Industrial Relations, Nov. 1, 1930. “The time to provide”: “History of the Kodak Employees’ Association, Inc.,” undated typescript, KHC.
Signature benefit: “Experience of Eastman Kodak Company with Profit-Sharing,” statement presented by M. B. Folsom to the US Senate Finance Committee, Nov. 21, 1938, KHC; Jacoby, Modern Manors, 79. A month’s pay: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 62. “Godsend to me”: March 16, 1965, letter from A. W. Crittenden to Kodak president William Vaughn, KHC. “Dollars and cents”: “Eastman Tells About His Plan of Profit Sharing for Employes,” New York Times, Feb. 4, 1923. Also cited in Jacoby, Modern Manors, 64.
$10 million: “History of Kodak” on corporate website; Ackerman, George Eastman, 378–381. “Prospect of dying soon”: History of the Kodak Employees’ Association, Inc.,” undated typescript, KHC. “Well satisfied”: Ackerman, 393.
Sickness allowance: Eastman Kodak Industrial Relations,” undated typescript, KHC; “Beginning With a Welfare Fund,” undated typescript, KHC; Gordon, Dead on Arrival, 49. “Most advanced yet”: Corporate news release, Dec. 21, 1928, KHC; Brayer, 361. Housing developments: Brayer, 360. Realty Corporation: “Own Your Home,” The Kodak Magazine, March 1928, KHC; “Kodak Employees Realty Corporation,” undated typescript, KHC; Jacoby, Modern Manors, 69. Savings and Loan: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 69.
Union Free School: Brayer, 360. Tuition subsidies: “Special Educational Courses: 1922–1923,” KHC. Sports leagues: Team results were regularly reported in The Kodak Magazine. Also see Jacoby, Modern Manors, 61. String quartets: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 61. Kodak Medical Department: “More About Our Medical Department,” The Kodak Magazine, July 1925, KHC. Nutrition adviser: “Information from Mrs. Wintress D. Murray, Eastman Kodak Company’s Nutrition Director,” undated typescript, KHC. Ten visiting nurses: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 69; “Friendly Visitors,” The Kodak Magazine, Oct. 1923, KHC. “Kodak King”: Ackerman, 387. Alongside: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 26–34. He notes that all of the companies listed were among the “vanguard” of welfare capitalism, meaning that they engaged fully in these practices. Others were “laggards” whose “efforts were less comprehensive,” while still others were “traditionalists” that “adopted few or none of the reforms.” Also see Brandes, American Welfare Capitalism, 18–19.
Depression changed: Harris, 19; Jacoby, Modern Manors, 32; Brandes, 142. “We hoped”: April 29, 1932, letter from Stuber to employees, KHC. The company trimmed: The layoff and details of the pay cuts are covered in Stuber’s letter. The reduction in pay is also noted in “Eastman Kodak Company Log of General Wage and Salary Rate Adjustments, Rochester Establishments,” July 29, 1947, KHC. More layoffs would come in 1938. Failed to issue: “Experience of Eastman Kodak Company with Profit-Sharing,” statement presented by M. B. Folsom to the US Senate Finance Committee, Nov. 21, 1938, KHC; wage dividend tables, KHC; “Eastman Kodak,” undated typescript by A. G. Walker, TSC.
Largely intact: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 71. Paid vacations: “Founding Dates for Kodak Benefit Plans,” undated typescript, KHC; Liebschutz, Communities and Health Care, 33. Hospital insurance: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 78; Liebschutz, 34–35. Led an alliance: Originally, fourteen companies signed up. For details, see “The Rochester Unemployment Benefit Plan” by Marion B. Folsom, Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, Jan. 1932; “Interview with Marion Folsom: The History of the Unemployment Benefit Plan,” undated typescript, KHC; “The Rochester Unemployment Benefit Plan,” The Kodak Magazine, May 1931, KHC; “Will the ‘Rochester Plan’ Solve Unemployment?” Forbes, June 1, 1931; MFOH. Jacoby, Modern Manors, 73, notes that the plan largely failed in the end: “After 1931, instead of growing the plan shrank, promised benefits were cut, and only seven firms remained when the first benefits were paid in 1933.” From the reserve: “Marion B. Folsom and the Rochester Plan of 1931” by Richard E. Holl, Rochester History, Winter 1999. Holl writes that benefit payments from Kodak amounted to $21,000 in 1933, $5,000 in 1934, and $150 in 1935. Separation rate: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 74.
Bookkeeping techniques: “Marion B. Folsom and the Rochester Plan of 1931” by Richard E. Holl, Rochester History, Winter 1999. Personally wooed: Brayer, 356–358; Miller, 68–69. “A ‘square deal’”: “Experience of Eastman Kodak Company with Profit-Sharing,” statement presented by M. B. Folsom to the US Senate Finance Committee, Nov. 21, 1938, KHC. “Square deal” was a popular phrase within Kodak. See “F. W. Lovejoy: The Story of a Practical Idealist,” a tribute to the company’s fourth president, published by Kodak, 1947.
“Up against it”: MFOH.
Many companies: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 7. “Poison the minds”: Aug. 15, 1919, letter from Eastman to Kodak employees, KHC.
“We are helpless”: “May Day,” The Kodak Worker, “Issued Monthly by the Workers (Communist) Kodak Park Nucleus,” May 1928.
New Deal era laws: First came the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933 and then, most significantly, the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. 22,000 workers: The number of US–based employees in 1938 was 22,500. “Experience of Eastman Kodak Company with Profit-Sharing,” statement presented by M. B. Folsom to the US Senate Finance Committee, Nov. 21, 1938, KHC. “Open Door”: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 87–88. Kodakery: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 87. Kept tabs: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 45. “To go along”: MFOH. Also quoted in Jacoby, Modern Manors, 45.
Toughest test yet: “Kodak Refutes UE Charges,” Rochester Sun, Feb. 19, 1947; “Supplement to Kodak Industrial Relations,” undated typescript, KHC; “Union Organization Forces Camera Wks. to Offer Raise,” union flier, Dec. 14, 1947, KHC. Jacoby, Modern Manors, 90–91. “These outsiders”: Feb. 17, 1947, letter to employees, KHC. Also quoted in Jacoby, Modern Manors, 91.
“Industrial paternalism”: Brandes, ix. “Two generations”: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 49. None ever would: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 86, notes that only one Kodak facility in North America was ever unionized—a small plant outside Toronto shortly after World War II.
Just blocks: Interview transcript with Harrison Jones II, MPRF. Mr. Inside: Allen, Secret Formula, 202. “Knee-pants boys”: April 7, 1953, remarks by Woodruff at a bottlers’ tribute to Jones, RWP.
A lawyer: Jones graduated from the University of Georgia in 1907 and obtained a law degree from the University of Michigan. He then returned to Atlanta and taught at Emory University before joining Coca-Cola (“Coca-Cola Executive Harrison Jones Dies,” Atlanta Constitution, June 19, 1967). Chautauqua tent: Cheatham, “Your Friendly Neighbor,” 147. “Spate of profanity”: Remarks by Ralph Hayes at R. W. Woodruff Dinner, Dec. 6, 1949, RWP. “Steam engine”: Cheatham, 143.
Often fractious: Pendergrast, 135–144; Allen, Secret Formula, 158. “Child of a marriage”: Cheatham, 146.
25–26 Company cafeteria: Pendergrast, 155. “Spellbound”: Interview transcript with Harrison Jones II, MPRF. Never unionized: Pendergrast, 267.
Private dining room: Pendergrast, 155. Cuesta-Rey: “Bob Woodruff of Coca-Cola,” Fortune, Sept. 1945. Ichauway Plantation: Life there is reflected in numerous thank-you letters sent to Woodruff and other documents found in RWP; Elliott, Mr. Anonymous; “Boss Emeritus,” Coca-Cola publication, March 1985; “Bob Woodruff of Coca-Cola,” Fortune, Sept. 1945; Pendergrast, 156, 170, 267. “Negro spirituals”: “Bob Woodruff Lays Success to ‘Shirt Sleeve’ Philosophy,” Atlanta Journal, Sept. 8, 1940.
“Could feel it”: Pendergrast, 155.
“The Age of Edison”: Watts, The People’s Tycoon, 44; Schatz, The Electrical Workers, 7. Nearly 7,000: In 1945, Coca-Cola employed 1,585 through its headquarters operation, 3,313 at is domestic subsidiaries, and 2,026 abroad (“Personnel Report,” Jan. 31, 1945, RWP).
Legend has it: “Refreshing Facts About Coca-Cola,” Coca-Cola Consumer Information Center, 1987, MPRF; “Secret Formula for Coca-Cola Began in Pharmacist’s Brass Pot,” Associated Press news archive, April 23, 1985. Pendergrast, 25–28, punctures the myth, writing that Pemberton was really a morphine addict who worked out of a full-blown home laboratory.
Billionth gallon: April 15, 1953, letter from H. B. Nicholson to Robert Woodruff, RWP. Five to one: Hartley, Marketing Successes, Historical to Present Day, 84–85. “Sublimated essence”: April 12, 1941, Ralph Hayes letter to Robert Woodruff, RWP; Allen, Secret Formula, 227; Pendergrast, 194. “Unique position”: May 26, 1942, letter from Hayes to Woodruff, RWP. Coca-Cola’s advertising agency, D’Arcy, “created a 1942 masterpiece of pseudoscience entitled ‘Importance of the Rest-Pause in Maximum War Effort’” (Pendergrast, 196).
Relatively well: Coca-Cola’s factory workers earned an average of $31.75 a week, compared with the average manufacturing wage of $27.07 a week, according to a July 12, 1938 memo, RHP. Stinted somewhat: Executive salaries at Coca-Cola were $31,785, compared with $35,000 noted in a 1936 survey of large industrial companies, according to the same memo. “Three times as much”: Remarks to the Coca-Cola Training School, Dec. 1943, RWP.
Occasional grumbling: For instance, an executive named Benjamin Oehlert Jr. complained that compensation “has not kept pace with the demands of increased taxation, the rising costs of living, and the additional expense suffered by employees from repeated geographical transfer” (Feb. 27, 1948, memo by Oehlert, RWP). “Fellow fail”: “Bob Woodruff Lays Success to ‘Shirt Sleeve’ Philosophy,” Atlanta Journal, Sept. 8, 1940. “Loyalty to”: April 17, 1958, remarks by Hayes, RWP. Well-timed: Pendergrast, 156.
“Country boys”: The comments by Sharp and Judkins are noted in a Feb. 15, 1939, memo from Ralph Hayes to Woodruff, RWP. “Next year better”: The comments by Brogunier are noted in a Feb. 15, 1939, memo from Ralph Hayes to Woodruff, RWP.
“Had been hijacked”: May 8, 1939, letter from Hayes to Woodruff, RWP.
Earned a degree: “Gerard Swope, 84, Ex-G.E. Head, Dies,” New York Times, Nov. 21, 1957. Italians, Czechs: Loth, Swope of G.E., 33.
Made his way: Loth, 31–33; McQuaid, A Response to Industrialism, 124. Mansion would expand: Encyclopedia of Chicago (encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org), entry for “Hull House.”
“Moral superiority”: “As Chicago’s Hull House Closes Its Doors, Time to Revive the Settlement Model?” by Louise W. Knight, The Nation, Jan. 25, 2012.
Louis Brandeis: Loth, 20; Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life, 777. Brandeis, however, did not persuade Swope about the dangers of a business becoming too big. “Can’t have both”: Widely quoted, including in Parenti, Democracy for the Few, 276. “Spring under tension”: Bernstein, The Turbulent Years, 611. World’s Fair: “New-Type Executive, Wizard of Plants and Markets,” Forbes, Feb. 23, 1923; Loth, 21; Hammond, Men and Volts, 381. “Gerard Swope, 84, Ex-G.E. Head, Dies,” New York Times, Nov. 21, 1957. Full-time resident: McQuaid, A Response to Industrialism, 124. Addams herself: Loth 43; Schatz, 14. Mary taught: Loth 50; Schatz, 14.
Foreign operations: Hammond, 381. “Three factors”: New-Type Executive, Wizard of Plants and Markets,” Forbes, Feb. 23, 1923.
After merging: Online timeline from the Schenectady Museum (schenectadymuseum.org/edison/a_timeline/03_h01.htm). Number of steps: They are noted in Hammond, 383. Flu pandemic: 1975 interview with Charles Marcy, former head of the personnel department at the Schenectady Works, Hall of History Biographical and Oral History Collection, SMA.
Added a bevy: Hammond, 386; Warner, Unwalla, and Trimm, The Emergent American Society, 170–171; 1975 interview with Charles Marcy, former head of the personnel department at the Schenectady Works, Hall of History Biographical and Oral History Collection, SMA. General counsel: Hammond 381–382. Poor farm boy: McQuaid, A Response to Industrialism, 117. Exposed to the thinking: Heald, The Social Responsibilities of Business, 24; McQuaid, A Response to Industrialism, 173. “Liberal notions”: Tarbell, Owen D. Young, 147. Interestingly, Young was the Commerce Department’s first choice to run the CED, but he said he was unavailable, and the post went to Hoffman (Schriftgiesser, 27; Heald, 253).
30–31 “Servant to a master”: Young’s entire speech is reprinted in Tarbell, 153–157. Parts are recounted in Schatz, 15–16.
Rates as high: Tarbell, 148. “Slowly we are learning”: Tarbell, 153; Schatz, 15.
Two other methods: These three—welfare capitalism, scientific management, and company unions—were “the key elements in the progressives’ program,” according to Harris, 17. Cousin of Fordism: For a persuasive and nuanced account of the relationship between Taylorism and Fordism, see Brinkley, 139–141. Modern Times: Jurgens, Malsch, and Dohse, Breaking from Taylorism, 4. Also see Heckscher, 15. Completely different goal: Weisbord, Productive Workplaces, 35–39, 44, 48–49, 59, 66–69. Also see Kaufman, The Origins and Evolution of the Field of Industrial Relations in the United States, 22. “Principal object”: Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management, 9.
Taught GE: See Brian Price’s essay “Frank and Lillian Gilbreth and the Motion Study Controversy, 1907–1930” in Nelson, A Mental Revolution, 70. Also see Schatz, 42–44. “Rate-busting”: Schatz, 44. By the mid-1920s, 75 percent to 90 percent of the production workers at GE were paid on an incentive basis (Schatz, 23).
The other tactic: Schatz, 22, 40–42. Not only at GE: The corporations listed here had company unions that were genuinely popular with employees (Jacoby, Modern Manors, 23). More than 1,000: Kaufman and Taras, Nonunion Employee Representation, 77. “Calculated to deceive”: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 23. Given access: Schatz, 42. “Secure sympathy”: Schatz, 41. Ran high: Schatz, 41–42. Turnover was low: Schatz, 46.
“A job for every man”: Tarbell, 226. Intricate scheme: See Frederick, The Swope Plan; Loth, 201–215; Schatz, 55–58; Heald, 96–97; Bernstein, The Turbulent Years, 19–21; Domhoff and Webber, 117; Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, 27. Moved on its own: Schatz, 58–59.
Cut back: Schatz, 60–61. 30 percent: Schatz, 61. Payroll shrank: Schatz, 61. Company restored: Schatz, 67. James Carey: Schatz, 63–64. In 1937, the United Electrical and Radio Workers of America became the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (Schatz, 64).
Openly Embraced: Kaufman, Zacharias, and Karson, Managers vs. Owners, 121; Met secretly: Loth, 168–172; Bernstein, The Turbulent Years, 603–604. Ahead of their time: Heald, 97.
“Piece of despotism”: Cited in Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, 149. Constructive suggestions: Swope was concerned, in particular, about whether the bill would outlaw company unions (Domhoff and Webber, 134–138). In the end, the Wagner Act did not ban company unions outright, but the measure did make it illegal for any employer to dominate, interfere with, or provide financial assistance to a labor organization. As interpreted by the National Labor Relations Board, this provision made it virtually impossible as a practical matter for company unions to exist any longer (Kaufman and Taras, 77). Also see Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home, 30. It was inescapable Bernstein, The Turbulent Years, 603. “Who give their lives”: Loth, 259–260.
Swope’s lieutenants: Loth, 257; Bernstein, The Turbulent Years, 613. “Fine intimate talk”: Loth, 258. “Boy wonder”: Carey was widely known by this moniker. See rci.rutgers.edu/~smlr/library/james_carey/biography.htm. “Can’t get along”: Loth, 258. Swept aside: Schatz, 72. First national contract: Schatz, 74; Bernstein, The Turbulent Years, 613.
Decidedly different view: Schatz, 170–171; Harris, 23; Jacoby, Modern Manors, 8.
Sent a squad: The Sales Management findings are the subject of an April 29, 1938, memo from Ralph Hayes to Robert Woodruff, RWP. Middletown: Muncie was the subject of the 1929 classic Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture by sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd.
Early adopter: Sloan, My Years with General Motors, 390–391. Bonus system: “How Members of the General Motors Family Are Made Partners in General Motors,” a message to stockholders from Alfred P. Sloan, 1928, SA. Savings and investment: “General Motors Employes Savings and Investment Plan,” part of the union’s 1970 negotiating material, UAW. The plan was discontinued in the 1930s. Also see Sloan, Adventures of a White-Collar Man, 151–152. Training institute: “General Motors Institute of Technology: The Training School for Employes of General Motors,” corporate publication, March 1929, SA. Life insurance: “Employes’ New Group Insurance Plan,” corporate publication, 1928, SA. Accident Insurance: Employes’ New Group Insurance Plan,” corporate publication, 1928, SA. Also see Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine, 294. Job sharing: “The Worker in General Motors” by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., Dec. 31, 1937, BL; Farber, Sloan Rules, 159–160. No-interest loans: “How a Nation Gets Strong: Men, Management, and Machines at Work,” SA. Retirement plan: “Regardless of Age or Job… Most of Us Look Forward to Retiring Some Day,” corporate publication, 1945, BL. Wages were good: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 106. Even during the worst year of the Depression, the hourly earnings of GM workers were 20 percent to 30 percent above industrial averages (“The Worker in General Motors” by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., Dec. 31, 1937, BL).
Connecticut family: Farber, 1. At MIT: Farber, 4–5. He bought: Farber, 11. Greatly expanded: Farber, 16–19. Founded in 1908: Farber, 23; Sloan, My Years with General Motors, 5.
$5 million: Farber, 26. The financial brink: Farber, 31–50. “A great weakness”: Sloan, My Years with General Motors, 4. Forced Durant out: Farber 44–45; Sloan, My Years with General Motors, 38. Back on track: Sloan, My Years with General Motors, 42–56. Made president: Farber, 72.
“First to work out”: From Drucker’s foreword to Sloan, My Years with General Motors, vi. Also see “Contributions to Administration by Alfred P. Sloan Jr. and “GM” by Ernest Dale, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1, June 1956. “Unbelievably generous”: Drucker’s foreword, viii.
“Aboveboard discussion”: “How Has Success Been Achieved by General Motors?” an interview with Alfred P. Sloan Jr., corporate publication, 1927, SA.
GM hired Pinkerton: All details on and quotations regarding GM’s spying operation, unless otherwise noted, are drawn from the official report and transcript of the hearings on “Violations of Free Speech and Rights of Labor” before a subcommittee of the US Senate Committee on Education and Labor, Feb. 15–19, 1937. Cleaned out: At the individual plant level, the reports from Pinkerton and other spy agencies were destroyed daily.
Into its pocket: In addition to the hearings, see Nowak, Two Who Were There, 81–82. Tapped the phone: Pinkerton denied this. Gun-wielding thugs: Brinkley, 382–383, 429. Also see Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 82.
Fisher No. 1: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 76; Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 310. Strike spread: Kennedy, 310–314; Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 76–79; Barnard, American Vanguard, 83–89. Retreat that led: Farber, 199. For more, listen to the voices at the Flint Sit-Down Strike Audio Gallery (flint.matrix.msu.edu/index.php).
Breaking the law: Sloan, My Years with General Motors, 393; Brown, Some Reminiscences of an Industrialist, 94. “Higher today”: Sloan’s statement was carried in full by various newspapers, including the Kokomo Tribune of Indiana, Jan. 5, 1937. Also quoted, in part, in Farber, 196. 1880 to 1915: Jacoby, Employing Bureaucracy, 32–40. Also see Cappelli, 56–57. “Harder and harder”: Farber, 195. Become corporate president: Knudsen’s biography from the GM Heritage Center (history.gmheritagecenter.com/wiki/index.php/Knudsen,_William_S.). Knudsen replaced Sloan, who became chairman. Fifteen languages: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 106.
“Sit down! Sit down!”: Lynch, Strike Songs of the Depression, xvii.
Pressure mounting: Farber, 197–208; Kennedy, 312–314; Barnard, 89–91; Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 78; Johnson, Maurice Sugar, 202–205. 125 cars: Farber, 208.
Four-page agreement: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 79. Bargaining agent: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 79; Kennedy, 314; Farber, 208–209; Johnson, 206. Under the terms of the contract, this exclusivity was for six months. Monumental: Kennedy, 308, 314.
“Colossal supersystem”: Kennedy, 310. Pinkerton also worked for Bethlehem Steel, Pennsylvania Railroad, Continental Can, Campbell Soup, Shell Petroleum, and others, but GM by far the biggest user of its services. See Bernstein, The Turbulent Years, 516–519. Also see Huberman, The Labor Spy Racket, 8.
Dynamited a power station: The perpetrators were said by police to be members of the Mechanics Educational Society, according to the Ludington Daily News of Michigan, Oct. 18, 1933.
“Or will management”: Part of Sloan’s statement to the 1937 sit-down strikers. American Liberty League: Farber, 183–185. Also see Lowenstein, While America Aged, 15.
Bad practice: It’s not clear where Sloan himself stood on the use of spies. He had joined: From corporate biographies of Wilson found in SA.
Toolmakers’ local: Drucker, Adventures of a Bystander, 274. Eugene Debs: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 139. Framed copy: Drucker, Adventures of a Bystander, 274.
“Isn’t rhetoric”: Drucker, Adventures of a Bystander, 275.
Intellect and energy: Bailey, 136–137; Schriftgiesser, 90; Harris, 183; Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, 104. “A dictum”: Jan. 11, 1943, memo from Brown to GM’s Post-War Planning Policy Group, DBP. A thick line: See, for instance, Mizruchi, 155; Van Elteren, Labor and the American Left, 103; Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight, 165. GE: Lem Boulware, who would join GE in 1945 and go on to head labor relations for the company, was a member of various committees of the NAM as well as the US Chamber of Commerce. Kodak: As Folsom was helping to found the CED, Kodak President T. J. Hargrave served on the executive committee of the NAM (“The NAM as an Interest Group” by Philip H. Burch, Politics Society, 1973). Coca-Cola: Ralph Hayes told Robert Woodruff he’d become concerned that “the NAM in large sections of the public mind has come to be associated with arch-conservatism and propaganda campaigns,” and that could alienate the soda-drinking public (Nov. 15, 1944, Ralph Hayes memo to Woodruff, RWP). Nevertheless, the company contributed money to the NAM (July 14, 1943, letter from Hayes to DuPont vice president Japser Crane, RWP). Corporate schizophrenia: One who does make this point effectively is Fones-Wolf, 24. Harris, 182, also points out that CED members often found themselves “overlapping with liberal elements” in the NAM and US Chamber of Commerce.
More than 400,000: Kennedy, 856.
Magazine reported: “The Economy: The Patient Feels Fine,” Time, Jan. 21, 1946.
“Continuing success”: GM republished Wilson’s six principles in different formats. Various versions can be found at SA. Wilson’s principles were also one of three “thought-starters” given out to those participating in the MJC (Evans and Laseau, My Job Contest, 7; General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 145).
Kitts’s composition: General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 116–120. Nearly 175,000: The official tally was 174,854 (General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 9; Evans and Laseau, 12). Entrants had to be on the payroll continuously from Sept. 14, 1947 to the date winners were announced in December (General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 143). Made of gold: General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 115; Evans and Laseau, 13.
59 percent: Evans and Laseau, 10; General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 66. The participation rate for eligible salaried employees was 82 percent; for hourly workers it was 55 percent (Evans and Laseau, 34). Many such details are also captured in “Employee Relations at General Motors: The ‘My Job Contest,’ 1947” by Alan Raucher, Labor History, Vol. 28, No. 2, 1987. Six stories: General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 26; Evans and Laseau, A-48. Teaser campaign: Evans and Laseau, 5–6. Contest chairmen: Evans and Laseau, A-7. “Be A Highbrow”: Evans and Laseau, Figure 2. Open houses: Evans and Laseau, 8. Postcards: Evans and Laseau, 9.
250 words: All of the details on the lengths and languages of the letters can be found in Evans and Laseau, 10. Latin: General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 125. Braille: General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 52; Evans and Laseau, A-48. Recordings: General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 138. Silent film: General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 128. Poems, acrostics: General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 138.
Forty cars: Evans and Laseau, 9; corporate news release, Dec. 13, 1947, UAW. Other items: Evans and Laseau, 9, 13; corporate news release, Dec. 13, 1947, UAW. “Apple-polishing”: “A Peculiar Sort of Joe,” Time, Dec. 29, 1947. “Better the tools”: “Six Basic General Motors Principles,” SA. “I feel”: General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 119. Kitts’s words in this section have been edited slightly for readability.
“Pyramid of opportunities”: Sloan, Adventures of a White-Collar Man, 153. This quotation is cited as well in Chinoy, Automobile Workers and the American Dream, 5–6.
“Wasn’t as smart”: All quotations and other biographical details in this paragraph are from a 2010 interview by the author with Kitts.
“Receiving good wages”: General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 117. 52 percent: Evans and Laseau, 46. Eighteen broad themes: Evans and Laseau, 46–48. The others were: the importance of the job, pride, cooperation among fellow employees, the abilities and attitudes of one’s immediate supervisor, policies of management, working conditions, job security, the chance for advancement, fringe benefits, plant safety, holidays and vacations, recreational and cultural facilities, personal achievement, steadiness of work, the company suggestion plan, the chance to partake in the American free-enterprise system, and seniority. “Ask for a raise”: General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 133. “I gets paid”: General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 93. Lived with: From a 2012 interview by the author with Vernon Halliday’s son, Jim. Financial incentives: Within Civic Park, GM limited the price of homes to a range of $3,500 to $8,500, with a down payment of just 5 percent, and it offered credit of $800 on the purchase with a minimum of five years of company service, along with a dollar-for-dollar savings account match up to $300 (“Civic Park Home Preservation Manual,” City of Flint, Michigan, 1981).
“Peace of mind”: General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 123. “Gift to me”: General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 37. “Humanitarian progress”: General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 91.
$3,000 per employee: Calculated from GM’s 1947 annual report. The company had 375,689 hourly and salaried employees, and a total payroll of $1.16 billion. Compared with: See “Compensation per full-time equivalent employee in all industries: 1929–1994,” Sutch and Carter, Historical Statistics of the United States, 2–283. 18 percent: Sutch and Carter, 2–283. Now surging: Between February and December 1946 alone, the Consumer Price Index rose by 18 percent (Halpern, UAW Politics in the Cold War Era, 39). Also see Wells, The Federal Reserve System: A History, 86; Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home, 256; Samuelson, The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath, 93. Massive layoffs: Toward the end of 1945, auto industry employment of production workers was down 32 percent from its wartime peak (Halpern, 44). Below 4 percent: “Labor force, employment, and unemployment: 1938–2000,” Sutch and Carter, 2–85. “From poverty”: Allen, The Big Change, 213. It surveyed: Data cited in “Next Steps Toward Security of Work and Wages,” remarks at the University of Michigan Conferences on Industrial Relations, 1947–1948, by J. F. Teegardin, KHC.
Nearly half: Evans and Laseau, 46. “Really proud of”: General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 132–133. “Proudest G.I.”: General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 157.
“Accentuate the positive”: General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 176. “The doughnut”: From Coen’s foreword to Evans and Laseau, iii.
Met with experts: Evans and Laseau, 17. Statistical Analytics: Evans and Laseau, 18. “Mark-sense”: Evans and Laseau, 19. MJC final judges: In addition to Drucker, the other judges were poet and journalist Edgar Guest, James McCarthy of the University of Notre Dame, National War Labor Board chairman George Taylor, and US commissioner of education John Studebaker (Evans and Laseau, 11–12; General Motors, The Worker Speaks, 10–20). “Richest source”: Drucker, Concept of the Corporation, (epilogue to the 1983 edition), 300.
Two in five: “Employee Attitude Testing in American Industry” by Sanford M. Jacoby, Working Paper Series–120, Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California at Los Angeles, Oct. 1986. “Above-average plant”: Jacoby, “Employee Attitude Testing in American Industry.” To vent: Jacoby, “Employee Attitude Testing in American Industry”; Trahair, Elton Mayo, 236. “Safety valve”: “Report on Group Conference Program of the Cine Kodak and Sheet Film Division, Eastman Kodak Company,” TSC. Blunt union organizing: Jacoby, “Employee Attitude Testing in American Industry.”
Pioneered in the 1920s: “Employee Attitude Testing in American Industry,” by Sanford M. Jacoby, Working Paper Series–120, Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California at Los Angeles, Oct. 1986. J. David Houser did some of the earliest work in the field. Tended to overestimate: Jacoby, “Employee Attitude Testing in American Industry.” “Not enough”: Mayo, The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization, 114–115. Some 21,000: Mayo, 83; Jacoby, “Employee Attitude Testing in American Industry.” For details on the interviewing at the Hawthorne Works, see Roethlisberger and Dickson, Management and the Worker, 189–252; Trahair, 230–236. Also see “The Human Relations Movement: Harvard Business School and the Hawthorne Experiments” (library.hbs.edu/hc/hawthorne/). Maslow: Maslow, Maslow on Management; “A Theory of Human Motivation” by A. H. Maslow, Psychological Review, Vol. 50, No. 4, July 1943. Also see “Guru: Abraham Maslow,” The Economist, Oct. 10, 2008. “Higher-level needs”: McGregor, The Human Side of Enterprise, 113. Also see Weisbord, 154–158.
“Fully proved”: Drucker, Adventures of a Bystander, 276. “Hygiene” factors: Herzberg, Mausner, and Snyderman, The Motivation to Work, 131–132. Floated an idea: Drucker, Concept of the Corporation, 300. “Had little use”: Drucker, Concept of the Corporation, 301–302.
“Very decent”: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 283. For more on the mutual admiration between Reuther and Wilson, see Serrin, The Company and the Union, 177–178; El-Messidi, The Bargain, 34. Also see Lowenstein, 22. “Direct attack”: Drucker, Concept of the Corporation, 300.
“One-sided”: Quoted in “The ‘New’ Labor Relations and the My Job Contest of 1947” by Ronda Hauben, The Searchlight, Feb, 11, 1988. Also quoted, in part, in Jacoby, Modern Manors, 245. In fairness, GM did give MJC participants a spot on the back of their entry forms to present criticisms, assuring them that anything they wrote there would not be evaluated by the judges. About 7 percent weighed in with various gripes—most of them about lousy general upkeep and working conditions, a lack of access to product discounts, a dearth of cooperation and coordination, and the absence of a pension plan for hourly workers. See Evans and Laseau, 36, Figure 17.
Ripped down: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 245; “Employee Attitude Testing in American Industry” by Sanford M. Jacoby, Working Paper Series–120, Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California at Los Angeles, Oct. 1986. Resorted to verse: McDonald’s poem is quoted in “The ‘New’ Labor Relations and the My Job Contest of 1947” by Ronda Hauben, The Searchlight, Feb. 11, 1988.
Under the pseudonym: Rosengarten, Urbane Revolutionary, 71. “The biggest liar”: The American Worker can be accessed via libcom.org/history/american-worker-paul-romano-ria-stone. This same passage is also quoted in “The History Corner: The ‘My Job’ Contest at General Motors” by Scott Highhouse, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (siop.org/tip/April10/13highhouse.aspx).
As much impact: See “Fortress Unionism” by Rich Yeselson, Democracy, Summer 2013. Also see Lambert, “If the Workers Took a Notion,” 121–128. Nelson Lichtenstein has written: “If Taft-Hartley did not destroy the union movement, it did impose upon it a legal/administrative straitjacket that encouraged contractual parochialism and penalized and penalized any serious attempt to project a class-wide political-economic strategy” (Fraser and Gerstle, The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 134). For a different view, downplaying Taft-Hartley’s significance, see “Does Organized Labor Have a Future?” by Melvyn Dubofsky, Logos, Fall 2013. Continued to grow: See “Continued Boom For Unions: Record Strides Despite Law’s Restrictions,” U.S. News & World Report, Oct. 1, 1948. Below 30 percent: “Union Membership Trends in the United States,” Congressional Research Service, Aug. 31, 2004; Milkman, L.A. Story, 170. “Your Old Man”: “Fortress Unionism” by Rich Yeselson, Democracy, Summer 2013.
Overwhelming majorities: The Senate vote was 68–25; the House vote was 331–83. “Slave-labor”: Margolies, A Companion to Harry S. Truman, 215. Many labor leaders would use the same terminology to describe Taft-Hartley. “Vicious piece”: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 266. “The clock”: Testimony, hearings before the Joint Committee on Labor-Management Relations, Part 2, June 4, 7–12, 706.
Huge victory: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 140. “GM’s shift”: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 140.
Grievance arbitration: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 144–153. An “umpire”: One of the first to hold the umpire’s position was George Taylor, a University of Pennsylvania professor and National War Labor Board official who served as a judge in the “My Job Contest.” “There is lost”: “Problems of Industrial Organization and Control” by Donaldson Brown before the Chicago Chapter of the Society for Advancement of Management, Nov. 16, 1945, DBP. Wilson realized: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 151. “Armed truce”: Harris, 29.
“Equality of sacrifice”: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 197. No-strike pledge: Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home, 93–105. Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 197. Workers resented: Atleson, Labor and the Wartime State, 130–134. Swelled during the war: Halpern, 38. Across heavy industry: Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home, 147. 2 million: Atleson, 142. More than half: Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home, 147. Chevrolet Gear and Axle: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 214. Striking over work standards was common. In fact, Lichtenstein (Labor’s War at Home, 147) says that “the issue in these strikes was chiefly the control of production and discipline,” not wages. Atleson, 143, says “wage disputes accounted for about half of all work stoppages in 1944, but disputes over ‘intraplant working conditions and policies’ and recognition and bargaining rights increased substantially.” “No other solution”: Atleson, 141. Quickie strikes: The average strike lasted fewer than six days—less than half the 1941 average and about a quarter of the 1937 figure (Atleson, 143).
Seven-point charter: “Business, Labor Frame Peace Code,” New York Times, March 29, 1945. Also see Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 225; Mizruchi, 88. “Bitterness and strife”: “Business, Labor Frame Peace Code,” New York Times, March 29, 1945; American Federationist, American Federation of Labor, Volume 52, 1945. Had struck: Brenner, Day, and Ness, The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History, 220. 28 million: Lee, Truman and Taft-Hartley, 16. Double the high: The wartime high, reached in 1943, was 13.5 million lost “man days” due to strikes (Lee, 16). The key issue: Brenner, Day, and Ness, 218; Millis and Brown, From the Wagner Act to Taft-Hartley, 302. Also see “Purchasing Power for Prosperity: The Case of the General Motors Workers For Maintaining Take-Home Pay” by Walter Reuther, Oct. 1945, ILIR. For his part, Peter Drucker (“What to Do About Strikes,” Collier’s, Jan. 18, 1947) asserted that the fundamental cause of the labor unrest was psychological, the result of the Depression of the 1930s: “The American worker… is conditioned to regard unemployment as the normal state. Hence he cannot feel that the present labor boom will continue. He must try to make hay while the sun shines.”
Seventy-two delegates: “Labor-Management Conference Convenes; Truman Addresses First Session,” Press Digest, National War Labor Board, Nov. 6, 1945, UAW. Also see Zieger, Minchin, and Gall, American Workers, American Unions, 160–161. “Many considerations”: “A Common Goal” by President Harry S. Truman, Nov. 5, 1945, Vital Speeches of the Day.
“Egg labor on”: Nov. 3, 1945, letter from Wilson to Philip Reed, GE’s chairman, PRP. Wilson was referring specifically to remarks that Truman had made just before the opening of the Labor-Management Conference. They were similar in tone and substance to his speech there. Protracted strikes: Brenner, Day, and Ness, 220–222. Scope and intensity: “Postwar Work Stoppages Caused by Labor-Management Disputes,” Monthly Labor Review, Dec. 1946. The most comparable period was 1919, which saw 3,630 strikes involving 4.2 million workers. Also see Zieger, Minchin, and Gall, 161. At GE: Schatz, 155; “A Brief History of UE Bargaining With GE: Seventy Years of Struggle,” United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America; Facts on File (fofweb.com/History/MainPrintPage.asp?iPin=TTY430&DataType=AmericanHistory&WinType=Free). “Captiously summed up”: Nicholson, Labor’s Story in the United States, 248.
Longest impasse: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 232. Labor Day eve: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 6. Eugene Debs: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 7. Die maker: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 17–18. Norman Thomas: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 31. Detroit City College: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 27–33. Gorky Auto Works: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 37. “Proletarian democracy”: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 41.
Socialist Party: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 54. Battle of the Overpass: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 83–86. Policy of accommodation: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 114. Turned against: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 112, 124–125, 131. Reuther wasn’t acting simply out of political expediency. After the Hitler-Stalin Pact was forged in 1939, Reuther’s break with the Communists “was a profoundly ideological and moral issue as well,” according to Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 155. For a less flattering portrait of Reuther, one in which he seems more the opportunist, see Johnson, 290–298. Resigned from: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 127. “Pro-defense”: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 157. “500 Planes a Day”: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 162; Halpern, 195. For Reuther’s “500 Planes a Day” speech, see milestonedocuments.com/documents/view/walter-reuthers-500-planes-a-day-speech.
Thrust himself: In moving against GM, Reuther had acted against the wishes of the CIO leadership, which thought that it was premature to launch any strikes so soon after V-J Day (Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 228–232; Halpern 55–56). Leading 180,000: Halpern, 51. The total number of GM hourly workers represented by the UAW at the time was 320,000, but 140,000 were on temporary layoff because of delays with postwar reconversion (Barnard, 215). “Time to debunk”: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 228. 10 percent: “UAW-CIO Has Refused 10 Per Cent More Than Wartime Take-Home Pay,” General Motors, background information sheet, Dec. 1945, UAW. Also see Halpern, 66; Barnard, 215. Upped its offer: Haplern, 66. 30 percent jump: “The General Motors Strike: The Facts and Their Implications,” General Motors, a special message to stockholders, 1945, SA; “Information Concerning the UAW-CIO Strike at General Motors For Members of General Motors’ Management,” Dec. 18, 1945, ILIR. Mountain of overtime: Text of brief submitted by General Motors in negotiations with UAW-CIO, Nov. 7, 1945, UAW. Also see “Purchasing Power for Prosperity: The Case of the General Motors Workers for Maintaining Take-Home Pay” by Walter Reuther, Oct. 1945, ILIR. “Never in the history”: Quoted in “Information Concerning the UAW-CIO Strike at General Motors for Members of General Motors’ Management,” Dec. 18, 1945, ILIR.
So flush: See “Interrelation Between Production, Wages, Prices and Profits of the General Motors Corporation,” 1945, ILIR. “Without price increases”: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 223. By pushing for a 30 percent jump in pay without an increase in the cost of cars, Reuther was really following the CIO’s postwar wage strategy (Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 223–229). Widened the circle: Lambert, 117. “In this struggle”: “Report to European Labor” by Walter Reuther, Nov. 1949, UAW.
Fallen 12 percent: General Motors background information sheet, UAW. “Awfully quick”: Transcript of press-radio conference, Oct. 19, 1945, UAW. “Have to be raised”: “Danger on the Production Front: General Motors’ Position on Important Problems Affecting the Entire Country,” 1945, SA. Also see “Business Trend for 1947” a speech by Alfred P. Sloan before the Boston Chamber of Commerce, Dec. 19, 1946, Vital Speeches of the Day. In it, he asserts: “The concept that wages—a major component of costs—can be substantially raised without affecting prices, unless offset by increasing efficiency… constitutes an amazing lack of understanding of fundamental economic reactions.”
Open the books: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 223, 238; Fountain, Union Guy, 181–182; Zieger, Minchin, and Gall, 163. “Finger in the Pie?”: The ad, which ran in Jan. 1946, can be found in UAW. Also see Sloan, My Years with General Motors, 397.
Fact-finding board: Halpern, 71; Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 240. Terrific letdown: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 240. “Complete endorsement”: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 240. “Moral victory”: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 241. $34 million: Halpern, 56. Nearly exhausted: “GM Strike Exhausting Detroit Relief Funds,” St. Louis Star-Times, March 8, 1946. Had all settled: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 242–243; Halpern, 75; Barnard, 217. Double-cross: Barnard, 217–218; Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 243. Also see “Stalinists Doublecross GM Auto Strikers,” Labor Action, Feb. 18, 1946.
“Be God damned”: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 243. Final agreement: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 244–246; Halpern, 87; Barnard, 218. Wasn’t much to show: Barnard, 218, Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 246; “Peace on 113th Day,” New York Times, March 14, 1946. Narrowly elected: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 248. His nerve: Barnard, 219; Serrin, 136.
“Will not tolerate”: “Collective Bargaining: How to Make It More Effective,” CED policy statement, Feb. 1947, PHP. Even President Truman: Gross, Broken Promise, 5. “The underdog”: Gross, Broken Promise, 5. Lambert, 120, notes that even Sumner Slichter, “a leading liberal postwar industrial relations scholar,” believed that in many cases strikes were no longer “expresses of legitimate grievances” but, rather, now “pitted the self-interest of labor unions against the broad interests of the community.” By depicting: Nashville Tennessean, Oct. 16, 1945. “Had enough?”: McQuaid, Uneasy Partners, 27. Also see Zieger, Minchin, and Gall, 167–169. “Industrial strife”: Keogh, This Is Nixon, 116. Republican rout: Republicans gained 13 seats in the Senate to emerge with a 51–45 majority, the largest majority that they’d enjoy there between 1930 and 1980. The GOP also gained 55 seats in the House to give them a 246–188 majority, their largest majority in that body since 1930 (“What 1946 Can Tell Us About 2010” by Michael Barone, The American, April 6, 2010).
“Happy with labor”: Davin, Crucible of Freedom, 340. Liberty League: Gross, The Making of the National Labor Relations Board, 172. 169 amendments: Lee, 30. “Chant of hate”: Lee, 31. Had sought: Lee, 31. 200 labor-related: “The Legislative History of the Taft-Hartley Act” by Gerard D. Reilly, The George Washington Law Review, Volume 29, Dec. 1960. “Death warrant”: Keogh, 115. “Its own excesses”: Lee, 28.
Given up: Harris, 119–120; McQuaid, Uneasy Partners, 28–29. Predictability and stability: Gross, Broken Promise, 277. “Orderly ground rules”: “Collective Bargaining: How to Make It More Effective,” CED policy statement, Feb. 1947, PHP. “Better than socialism”: Mills, The New Men of Power, 26.
This stance: Expressed in testimony by GM’s Charles E. Wilson, hearings before the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Feb 5, 1947; March 10, 1949, letter from GE’s Charles E. Wilson to Representative Andrew Jacobs, member of the House Committee on Education and Labor, LBP. Also see Mizruchi, 86–94. High-priced: Reilly charged each of his corporate clients $3,000 a month in the late 1940s—the equivalent of nearly $30,000 today—as reflected in papers found in GRP. Reilly’s service to General Motors and General Electric is noted in Harris, 123; Lee, 66.
“Beat the boys”: From a 2012 interview by the author with Heffern. Scholarship: From a 2012 interview by the author with Jack Reilly. Slight stutter: Margaret Heffern interview; “Edwin S. Smith Dropped From His NLRB Post,” Baltimore Sun, Sept. 18, 1941. “Socially awkward”: Jack Reilly interview. Mail carrier: “Reilly, Named to Labor Relations Board, Boston Man of Wide Experience,” Boston Globe, Sept. 14, 1941. After earning: Biographical details from “Reilly, Named to Labor Relations Board, Boston Man of Wide Experience,” Boston Globe, Sept. 14, 1941. Also see his obituary: “G. D. Reilly, 88, Former Judge And Official in the Labor Dept.,” New York Times, May 21, 1995. “Very idealistic”: As quoted in Reilly’s FBI file, GRP. Wound up: This was after a stint at the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation. Trusted adviser: As reflected in various correspondence on New Deal labor legislation, FPP.
“Mistaken zeal”: June 1, 1937, memo from Reilly to Perkins, FPP. Befriended many: Jack Reilly interview. Convicted of perjury: “Alger Hiss, Divisive Icon of the Cold War, Dies at 92,” New York Times, Nov. 16, 1996. Donald Hiss, who worked as an assistant to Reilly at the Labor Department before moving over to State, was accused by Whitaker Chambers of being part of the Communist underground in Washington, but was never accused of espionage. For more, see “Donald Hiss’s Story” at files.nyu.edu/th15/public/donaldhiss.html. “Unqualified advocate”: “An American You Should Know: Problems of Solicitor of Labor Department are Manifold,” Washington Star, June 21, 1938. “Correcting these evils”: Aug. 25, 1937, memo from Reilly to Perkins, FPP.
House conservatives: The lead antagonist was Republican J. Parnell Thomas of New Jersey, a member of the Dies Committee. His resolution also called for the impeachment of James Houghteling, the commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization. Extensive material on the Bridges case can be found in FPP. “Joan of Arc”: Pasachoff, Frances Perkins: Champion of the New Deal, 107. His vices: Jack Reilly interview. “Their knives”: Pasachoff, 107. “Most disarming”: Feb. 1, 1939, letter from Celler to Perkins, GRP. “Personal friendship”: Nov. 10, 1941, letter from Perkins to Reilly, copy courtesy of Jack Reilly.
“Roster of enemies”: Quoted in Gross, The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board, 89. Vigorous enforcement: Gross, The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board, 17. “Were immoral”: Gross, The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board, 247. “Brazen favoritism”: Gross, The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board, 240. Also see pages 57, 99, 209. “Never seen”: Gross, The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board, 222. Smith headed a House Special Committee to Investigate the NLRB. Hotbed of communism: Gross, The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board, 131–150.
Exaggerated: Gross (The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board, 17) notes that in July 1938, it was reported that the NLRB had yet to lose any of the sixteen board decisions that had been appealed to the Supreme Court. Also see pages 222–224; Millis and Brown, 234–268. Shook up: Gross, The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board, 226–228. Three-member: The Taft-Hartley Act would expand the NLRB to five members. One of them: Harry Millis, an economics professor from the University of Chicago, became chairman, replacing the more liberal Warren Madden. “Kept himself above”: “The President Names a New Member of NLRB,” Baltimore Sun, Sept. 18, 1941. “Waist deep”: GROH. “Skullduggery”: GROH. “Swung too far”: GROH. “Very paternalistic”: GROH. “Sneaker-wearing”: Gross, The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board, 241. Fuchs later admitted to heading a Communist cell inside the NLRB (“The Man Who Confessed,” Time, Oct. 10, 1955).
Invited to draft: Reilly had begun calling for changes to the National Labor Relations Act on his way out the door. See, for instance, “Reilly Advocates Six Changes in NLRB Rules, Wagner Act,” Washington Post, Aug. 12, 1946. Joseph Ball: GROH. By Robert Taft: GROH; Lee, 68. Reilly would help: Lee, 64. Conference committee: Lee, 72. “Alger Hiss’s son”: Jack Reilly interview. “Saint Frances”: Reich, Locked in the Cabinet, 77. “Adored her”: Margaret Heffern interview. Cufflinks: Jack Reilly interview.
“New barriers”: From Truman’s June 20, 1947, message to the House accompanying his veto of Taft-Hartley (presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=12675). Taft-Hartley created: Highlights of the law are drawn from McQuaid, Uneasy Partners, 31; Lambert, 122–123; Kirk and McClellan, The Political Principles of Robert A. Taft, 124. Emphasized the rights: Lambert, 122. “Out-conservatived”: From a 2012 interview by the author with Nebeker.
As many as 50,000: Mills, White Collar, 91. Staging walkouts: This and all other details of the union’s gains through this period are drawn from “History of the Movement to Organize Foremen in the Automotive Industry: December 1938–May 1945,” BL.
Once paid: Harris, 79. They wanted: “History of the Movement to Organize Foremen in the Automotive Industry: December 1938–May 1945,” BL. Played God: Harris, 76.
“Dual allegiance”: See, for instance, Purcell, Blue Collar Man: Patterns of Dual Allegiance in Industry; “Union Activity and Dual Loyalty” by Lois R. Dean, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 7, No. 4, July 1954; Drucker, Adventures of a Bystander, 276. “Imperil their ability”: Quoted in “History of the Movement to Organize Foremen in the Automotive Industry: December 1938–May 1945,” BL. Also see “G.M. Stand on Unionization of Foremen Explained,” transcript of radio interview with GM’s Harry Anderson, April 5, 1945, UAW.
“He gets it”: This and all other quotations by the GM foremen in this chapter, as well as any details about their lives and careers, are taken from typed interview notes found in RHGP. Cubicle-dwelling: See Saval, Cubed, 226–227.
“Statistical abstractions”: From Drucker’s foreword to Purcell, x. Yale University researchers: The research was led by Charles R. Walker, the director of the Yale Technology Project. Robert H. Guest, Arthur Turner, and Frank J. Jasinski later joined the team. Framingham: The Framingham plant had opened in 1949. They talked to: The interviews were conducted in 1952 and 1953. The researchers also interviewed the wives of production workers, as well as a small number of more senior GM managers.
“In my blood”: This and all other quotations by the GM production workers in this chapter, as well as any details about their lives and careers, are taken from typed interview notes found in TSC. Was above: Nationally, average earnings were sixty-nine cents (“Hourly earnings in manufacturing: 1923–1990,” Sutch and Carter, 2–281).
GM feted: Details on the banquet, including the menu, are from a copy of the program found in SA. “Have exceeded”: As quoted in corporate news release, Dec. 13, 1947, UAW. “Douglas instantly recognized”: Dec. 28, 1947, letter from Halliday to his parents, copy courtesy of Jim Halliday.
“To the stockyards”: “Some Effects of the Taft-Hartley Act” by Dale E. Good, Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, University of Illinois Bulletin. “Educational drive”: March 18, 1948, letter from UAW vice president John Livingston, to all union locals, included in “Membership Drive Program” packet, UAW. “Telling Any Lies”: Stack of contest fliers can be found in UAW.
“Jeopardizes the welfare”: “Organizational and Educational Program to Be Advanced in General Motors Plants Covered by National Agreement,” undated document, UAW. “In their bones”: Feb. 3, 1948, letter from UAW vice president John Livingston, to all GM union locals, UAW.
A handful: The prize list was sent on Feb. 4, 1948, from UAW vice president John Livingston, to all GM union locals, UAW. “There’s a Ford”: “A Membership Drive Prize, Detroit Times, Feb. 20, 1948. Delphia Baugh: Baugh’s statement is included as an attachment to a Feb. 11, 1949, memo from UAW vice president John Livingston to union public relations director Frank Winn, UAW.
74–75 More than 25,000: Fountain, 218. “Strengthened the hand”: Fountain, 218. Separate demands: El-Messidi, 49. “Damnedest struggle”: El-Messidi, 49. Negotiators pushed for: “Speakers Notes for General Motors Strike Vote Meetings,” undated document, UAW. “Top worry”: “GM Workers Need a Real Health and Medical Insurance Plan—but General Motors Still Won’t Bargain,” Bargaining Bulletin No. 4, undated document UAW.
“Beyond reason”: Sloan, My Years with General Motors, 398. “More realistic”: Sloan, My Years with General Motors, 398. “Socialistic desires”: “Finish Fight?” Time, Dec. 3, 1945. Also see Fountain, 177–178. Been replaced: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 277. His composure: “Louis Seaton, 81, Dies; G.M. Labor Specialist,” New York Times, March 6, 1988. Reuther was quieted: El-Messidi, 51.
Fetch a bowl: All details on the assassination attempt are taken from Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 271–272. Always suspected: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 275. It also seems that organized crime figures, who were tangled up in union politics and ran assorted illegal activities from various auto company factories, may have been involved. About a year after the assassination attempt on Walter Reuther, Victor Reuther was also hit by a shotgun blast.
Room 5–202: El-Messidi, 50. Thirty-seven: Corporate news release, May 25, 1948, CWP. Strain was growing: El-Messidi, 58; Sloan, My Years with General Motors, 398; “G.M. Boss Passes Wage Idea to Personnel Executives,” Business Week, June 5, 1948. Smoking cigars: El-Messidi, 50. Main goal: Corporate news release, May 25, 1948, CWP.
Tangible terms: Details are spelled out in “2-Year GM Wage Pact,” Detroit News, May 25, 1948; Auto Agreement Likely to Have Major Effect,” New York Times, May 31, 1948; corporate news release, May 25, 1948, CWP. Also see “Cost-of-Living Wage Clauses and UAW-GM Pact,” Monthly Labor Review, July 1948. “Group merit raise”: Sloan, My Years with General Motors, 399.
Not new: See “Adjusting Wages to Living Costs: A Historical Note” by Henry Lowenstern, Monthly Labor Review, July 1974. Kodak had increased: Brayer, 357. “Is Automatic”: “General Electric Policies Concerning Wages, Hours and Working Conditions for Shop Employees,” revised March 16, 1937, IUE. Also see Schatz, 67. Had flirted: Sloan, My Years with General Motors, 396. Refined the plan: Originally, GM wanted to tie wages to local fluctuations in the cost of living. But this was deemed impractical; Charlie Wilson’s advanced the concept by proposing to tie wages to the national Consumer Price Index (Sloan, My Years with General Motors, 396–397). During the 1945: “Information Concerning the UAW-CIO Strike at General Motors For Members of General Motors’ Management,” Dec. 18, 1945, ILIR.
76–77 Leon Trotsky: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 277; El-Messidi, 44. Also insisting: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 277. “Prefer to play”: Sloan, My Years with General Motors, 396.
From his bedside: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 279. “Are not chained”: As quoted in “Labor Relations at General Motors” by Agnes E. Meyer, a series of articles in the Washington Post, Aug. 20–22, 1948. “Greedy industrialists”: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 279.
All but erased: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 246. Nearly 20 percent: “Historical Inflation Rates: 1914–2015,” US Inflation Calculator, CoinNews.net.
“Gave me a penny”: “Everything Is Higher” by Ray Glaser, as found in Hille, The People’s Song Book, 107. In the same book, also see “A Dollar Ain’t a Dollar Anymore” by Tom Glazer, 112–113.
“Tremendous victory”: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 279. “No regard”: Address by Charles E. Wiilson, Frigidaire Annual Convention, Dayton, Ohio, March 31, 1948, SA. “Wage-price spiral”: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 246. “Want to catch up”: “Progress-Sharing Can Mean Industrial Peace” by C. E. Wilson, Reader’s Digest, Sept. 1952. Also quoted in Serrin, 20; Barnard, 273. Also see “Fair Wages and Economic Stability,” a talk by C. E. Wilson, Michigan State College, Oct. 17, 1951, in which he squarely blames government policy for inflation, UAW.
“Philosophy of progress”: As quoted in “Comments on the G.M.-U.A.W. Wage Contract of 1948,” The Review of Economics and Statistics, Feb. 1949. “Backward move”: “Bureaucrats Again Take Over Wage Fixing Under UAW-GM Sliding Scale Formula,” United Mine Workers Journal, June 1, 1948. Had manipulated: Aurand, Coalcracker Culture, 104. Also raised questions: “Comments on the G.M.-U.A.W. Wage Contract of 1948,” The Review of Economics and Statistics, Feb. 1949. “Vicious mechanism”: “Dangerous Wage-Price Escalator Set Up in General Motors Wage Pact,” Barron’s, May 31, 1948. One survey: This was based on sixty-nine respondents as polled by the National Industrial Conference Board (“Comments on the G.M.-U.A.W. Wage Contract of 1948,” The Review of Economics and Statistics, Feb. 1949). “Safe middle ground”: “Looking Forward in Labor Relations,” a talk by C. E. Wilson, Rochester Chamber of Commerce, June 2, 1948, CWP, SA. “Betting blue chips”: “G. M. Boss Passes Wage Idea to Personnel Executives,” Business Week, June 5, 1948. Into about half: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 287. Spread as well: El-Messidi, 115–116. Also see Lambert, 176; Stapleford, The Cost of Living in America, 253–254. Since 1975, general benefit increases for Social Security recipients have been COLAs.
Beginning of the end: See “Outlook For Lull in Big Strikes,” US News & World Report, July 16, 1948. UAW local: This was Chysler Local 7. “Strike photographs”: Lubell, The Future of American Politics, 179–180. Lubell’s observations from the local are also cited by Zieger, Minchin, and Gall, 193. Also see Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 276.
“Stabilizing influence”: Corporate news release, May 23, 1950.
A 20 percent increase: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 280. “Treaty of Detroit”: “The Treaty of Detroit: G.M. May Have Paid a Billion for Peace. It Got a Bargain,” Fortune, July 1950. Also see Mizruchi, 95; Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 276; Greenhouse, 71–75; Lowenstein, 24–25; Davis, The Vanishing American Corporation, 42; Reich, Saving Capitalism, 129. Would accomplish this: Details from the 1950 agreement can be found in GM’s corporate news release, May 23, 1950. Copies of the agreement itself are in UAW, BL, CWP. Consternation: Much of this stemmed from periodic government revisions to its cost of living index. See El-Messidi, 72–79; “Development of the New UAW Escalator Formula,” June 1, 1953, UAW. It also didn’t help that, from time to time, the COLA went down, cutting into workers’ pay. The UAW was left to remind its members that this was welcome news “in the fight to stop inflation” (Nov. 24, 1948 statement by union official T.A. Johnstone, UAW). Also see “The Truth About GM’s C of L Adjustment: Fair Weather Militants Trying to Capitalize on Price Decline,” GM Facts, Feb. 1949, UAW. Enormous triumph: GM had heretofore resisted negotiating with its unions over benefit plans, saying “the inclusion of health and welfare plans within the area of collective bargaining can only create new and unexplored areas of industrial disputes, difficult—if not impossible—to solve” (Statement of C. E. Wilson before the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Feb. 5, 1947, SA). Persistently pursuing: Wooten, The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, 35–36; Sass, The Promise of Private Pensions, 131–133; Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 282–283; Lowenstein, 17–21; Hacker, The Divided Welfare State, 124–132. Also see Ghilarducci, When I’m Sixty-Four, 231–253; Greenhouse, 283. Also see “Benefit Plans Under Collective Bargaining,” Monthly Labor Review, Sept. 1948. For the UAW, the key breakthrough came in 1949 at Ford. Inland Steel: In the case, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a National Labor Relations Board ruling that pensions were subject to collective bargaining. Inland Steel Co. v. NLRB, 170F 2d 247, 22 LRRM 2505 (CA 7, 1948), cert. denied, 336 U.S. 960, 24 LRRM 2019 (1949). Also see “G.M. Paces the U.S. Pension Parade,” Life, June 5, 1950; “Management Faces the Pension Problem,” National Association of Manufacturers, Oct. 1950, KC; Schieber, The Predictable Surprise, 134.
“Union security”: Corporate news release, May 23, 1950. In return: Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home, 267. “Cooperative attitude”: See “The Thinking Behind the Five Year General Motors Agreement,” a talk by Louis G. Seaton, American Management Association’s Personnel Conference, Oct. 2–4, 1950, UAW. Also see “Statement by General Motors Corporation Before Wage Stabilization Board Re: Annual Improvement Factor Increases,” May 24, 1951, UAW. Lay at the core: Aronowitz, From the Ashes of the Old, 25, writes: “By 1950 American labor was locked in an uneasy embrace with corporate America and the liberal state. In that year the postwar social compact was symbolically sealed” by the UAW agreement with GM. Also see “Satisfaction at General Motors,” The Nation, June 17, 1950.
“Intelligent trading”: “The General Motors-United Auto Workers Agreement of 1950” by Frederick H. Harbison, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 58, No. 5, Oct. 1950. Harbison is also quoted in Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home, 267; Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 292; Mizruchi, 96. “Agitate for”: Lubell, 181–182.
“Our hope”: “Five Years of Industrial Peace,” a talk by C. E. Wilson, National Press Club, June 8, 1950, SA.
Come to see: See, for example, “Inequality and Institutions in 20th Century America” by Frank Levy and Peter Temin, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 13106, May 2007. Thirteen years: Whitten and Whitten, Handbook of American Business History, 98. “Coal can offer”: As quoted in “100 Years with Coal Age,” Coal Age, Sept. 14, 2012. Also see Starr, 317. Rubber industry: Brenner, Day, and Ness, 405. Steel industry: Brenner, Day, and Ness, 360. “Never went on strike”: As quoted in Piven and Cloward, Poor People’s Movements, 157.
More than fivefold: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 291. About 4 percent: “Work stoppages, workers involved, average duration, and person-days idle: 1881–1998,” Sutch and Carter, 2–355.
“Can never be”: “War and Peace in Labor Relations” by Robert N. McMurry, Harvard Business Review, Nov./Dec. 1955. For a similar take, see Paddy Reilly’s essay “Clark Kerr: From the Industrial to the Knowledge Economy” in Lichtenstein, American Capitalism, 77–78.
Followed the patterns: Freeman and Medoff, What Do Unions Do?, 150–154; Rosenfeld, What Unions No Longer Do, 49–50; 74–79; “Unions, Norms, and the Rise in U.S. Wage Inequality” by Bruce Western and Jake Rosenfeld, American Sociological Review, Vol. 76, No. 4, Aug. 2011; “Unions, Inequality, and Faltering Middle-Class Wages” by Lawrence Mishel, Economic Policy Institute, Aug. 2012; Cappelli, 110; Osterman, Securing Prosperity, 28, 64. For a more mixed picture, see “Nonunion Wage Rates and the Threat of Unionization” by Henry Farber, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 58, No. 3, 2005. White-collar workers: “The Effect of Blue-Collar Unions on White-Collar Wages and Fringe Benefits” by Loren N. Solnick, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 38, No. 2, Jan. 1985; Freeman and Medoff, 156–158.
The southern clan: In 1912, Sams was hired as a traveling sales manager for Coca-Cola. He left the company in 1917 to join the Navy, but not before locking in his most important sale: he courted, and then married, Lottie Crass, whose father was well on his way to becoming one of the most successful owners in the Coca-Cola bottling network. After Sams was discharged from the military, he joined his wife’s family’s business and helped it expand well past its Virginia base. At one point, the enterprise owned forty-two separate Coca-Cola franchasies. In 1951, family members swapped stocks in various bottling franchises. The Sams faction gained control of thirteen bottling plants and sales centers, including Cumberland.
“Been married”: Transcript of remarks by Sams to the employees of the Cumberland Coca-Cola Bottling Works, June 25, 1951, CCCB.
Late September: The election notice is in CCCB. Mailed letters: The employee list is in CCCB. “You have security”: Sept. 22, 1951, letter from Coca-Cola executive Fred Hobbs to employees, CCCB.
Fourteen to five: The NLRB’s tally of ballots is in CCCB. “Single factor”: Undated note from Coca-Cola executive Fred Hobbs to Teamsters local business manager C. E. Stutzman, in response to Oct. 12, 1951, meeting between union and company officials. The five-cent threshold was long held sacrosanct within the Coca-Cola system (though in the late 1940s, some stores began selling a bottle of Coke for six cents). See, for instance, “Why Coke Cost a Nickel for 70 Years,” Planet Money, National Public Radio, Nov. 15, 2012. “Will not grant”: NLRB Charge Against Employer, Oct. 29, 1951, CCCB. May 10: NLRB Charge Against Labor Organization or Its Agents, July 8, 1952, CCCB.
Mass strikes: See “The Dimensions of Major Work Stopages, 1947–59,” Bulletin No. 1298, US Department of Labor, June 1961. Fewer than a hundred: “The Importance of Strike Size in Strike Research” by Jack W. Skeels, Paul McGrath, and Gangadha Arshanapalli, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 41, No. 4, July 1988. For workers involved in strikes, this study covers the period 1953–1977. Also see “Work Stoppages in the United States and New Zealand” by E. Kingman Eberhart, Economic Record, June 1961. Goons assaulted: Affidavits from the two Chambersburg salesmen are in CCCB. Customers of the Cumberland plant were threated, too. A couple of them returned the Coca-Cola they had purchased and asked for their money back.
A 6 percent boost: This was for the lowest-paid laborers in the plant. The route salesmen, who were paid a per-case commission, were subject to a different pay formula. “Wear out”: July 31, 1952, memo from plant manager Roy Lottig to Sams, CCCB.
Wage gains: As calculated by the author based on a copy of the contract and other documents in CCCB. “Until I nail”: Sept. 2, 1952, memo from Lottig to Sams, CCCB.
Company cancelled: As noted in Dec. 22, 1953, letter from Coca-Cola attorney Fred Pollard to Teamsters local business manager C. E. Stutzman, CCCB. After petitioning: Copy of petition, filed Nov. 19, 1953, in CCCB. Out on top: NLRB Certification of Results of Election in CCCB.
Won 83 percent: “National Labor Board elections and results: 1936–1988,” Sutch and Carter, 2–352. Also see “Downsizing the Past” by Sanford Jacoby, Challenge, May/June 1998; Jacoby, Modern Manors, 6–7, 54. “The Wail”: A copy of the poem, from 1962, is in RWP.
“Happiest sleep”: “Downsizing the Past” by Sanford Jacoby, Challenge, May/June 1998; Jacoby, Modern Manors, 8.
“Out of the way”: March 15, 1954, letter from Sams to Lottig, CCCB. “Any inkling”: March 12, 1954, memo from Lottig to Sams, CCCB.
“Born of loyalty”: Labor Board v. Electrical Workers, No. 15, 346 U.S. 464 (1953).
“What we want”: Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty, 230–231. For an excellent history on the concept of loyalty, from Socrates to Tocqueville and beyond, see Cecil, Equality, Tolerance, and Loyalty, 155–217.
Fourteen: As noted in Labor Board v. Electrical Workers, No. 15, 346 U.S. 464 (1953). “Just or unjust”: Notice to public in CCP. “Right to decide”: Statement given to the Charlotte Observer, July 10, 1949, CCP.
Began picketing: July 10, 1949, letter to WBT advertisers from local union president E. L. Stroupe, CCP. “Beneficial exercise”: Copies of Western Union telegrams in CCP. August 24: As noted in CCP. First in the Carolinas: “Chronology of WBTV” (wbtv.com/story/10534472/chronology-of-wbtv).
“Second-Class City”: Handbill found in CCP, JBP. Sterling Hicks also wrote to the Federal Communications Commission, suggesting that WBT’s television license be revoked because “the local outlet is not utilizing the full facilities as granted” (Aug. 6, 1949 letter from Hicks to FCC, CCP). Some 5,000: As noted in Labor Board v. Electrical Workers, No. 15, 346 U.S. 464 (1953).
“New thing called”: “Chronology of WBTV” (wbtv.com/story/10534472/chronology-of-wbtv). “Little bitter taste”: Sept. 2, 1949, letter from Bill Bethune to Bryan, JBP.
“Since early July”: Copies of Crutchfield’s letters to the employees are in CCP.
Postcard campaign: Copies of many of the postcards are in CCP. Own mailer: “WBT Would Like For You to Look at the Record,” CCP. WBT broadcast: “Chronology of WBTV” (wbtv.com/story/10534472/chronology-of-wbtv).
Police arrested: Details on the crime are drawn from “Police Thwart Dynamite Plot at WBT Tower,” Charlotte Observer, Jan. 23, 1950; “Sterling Hicks Arrested in Dynamiting Plot,” Charlotte Observer, Jan. 26, 1950; “Seize AFL Aid in Radio Tower Dynamite Plot,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 27, 1950. There is also extensive documentation on the Hicks case in CCP. Housepainter: That was Chesley Lovell. Ordered to serve: “Hicks Ordered to Serve Term,” Statesville Record & Landmark of Statesville, North Carolina, May 3, 1951.
Trial examiner ruled: NLRB Division of Trial Examiners, Jefferson Standard Broadcasting and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, A.F. of L., Local 1229, Case No. 34-CA-170, Aug. 21, 1950. “Physical sabotage”: NLRB Decision and Order, Jefferson Standard Broadcasting and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, A.F. of L., Local 1229, D-5140, June 29, 1951.
Technical grounds: The appeals court found that by using the word “indefensible” instead of “unlawful,” the NLRB had “misconceived the scope of the established rule.” See “Court Reverses Finding of NLRB,” Charlotte Observer, Nov. 21, 1952. Then took up: May 4, 1953, letter to Crutchfield from Jefferson Standard’s outside counsel, Whiteford Blakeney, CCP. The Supreme Court, however, denied the company’s request to become a formal party in the proceeding.
“Elemental cause”: Labor Board v. Electrical Workers, No. 15, 346 U.S. 464 (1953). Also see Heckscher, 24–25. In his dissent, Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote: “To float such imprecise notions as ‘discipline and ‘loyalty’ in the context of labor controversies, as the basis of the right to discharge, is to open the door wide to individual judgment by [NLRB] members and judges.” “Test in Firing”: U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 18, 1953. “Loyalty to the Boss”: Newsweek, Dec. 21, 1953. “Reds take over”: “Loyalty of Employees Elemental, Nation’s Highest Court Decides,” Greensboro Free Press, Dec. 17, 1953.
“Bite the hand”: Dec. 10, 1953, letter from Hilker to Crutchfield, WBP. “Truly sorry”: March 27, 1954, letter from Richardson to Crutchfield, CCP.
“Most controversial”: “Boulware Loses G.E. Labor Post,” New York Times, Sept. 11, 1957. “Grown men”: Jan. 26, 1988, letter from Boulware to Virgil Day, LBP.
Born in Springfield: All biographical details, as well as Boulware’s quotation in this paragraph, are from typed notes in LBP; Sept. 9, 1957 corporate news release announcing that Jack Parker had replaced Boulware as head of GE’s public and employee relations, LBP. Also see Phillips-Fein, 97–98; Kim Phillips-Fein’s essay “American Counterrevolutionary: Lemuel Ricketts Boulware and General Electric, 1950–1960” in Lichtenstein, American Capitalism, 253–254.
Stunned Wilson: Phillips-Fein, 96. Encircled GE factories: Phillips-Fein, 95. “Height of stupidity”: Phillips-Fein, 97; Phillips-Fein’s essay in Lichtenstein, American Capitalism, 253. Sympathy and support: The details are from Phillips-Fein, 96; Phillips-Fein’s essay in Lichtenstein, American Capitalism, 252–253. National pattern: Northrup, Boulwarism, 20; Phillips-Fein, 97; Phillips-Fein’s essay in Lichtenstein, American Capitalism, 253. Sidestepped: Boulware, The Truth About Boulwarism, 2. Northrup, 26; Evans, The Education of Ronald Reagan, 37; Phillips-Fein, 97; Phillips-Fein’s essay in Lichtenstein, American Capitalism, 254.
“Rewarding approach”: This and all other quotations in the paragraph are from “Then and Now,” a talk by Lemuel R. Boulward, General Electric Employee Relations Meeting, Aug. 31, 1977, LBP. Also see Boulware, 1–3.
“Ridiculous situation”: Boulware, 3. A salesman: See “Proposed Program of Industrial & Community Relations,” Aug. 1, 1945, LPB. Also cited by Phillips-Fein, 99; Phillips-Fein’s essay in Lichtenstein, American Capitalism, 254. “Job marketing”: Boulware, 24; Northrup, 28–29. “Tried to diagnose”: Boulware, 24–25.
A 9-point checklist: The fully worded plan is in Boulware, 26–28. Also see Evans, 48–50; Northrup, 26.
Boulware developed: Boulware, 32; Evans, 54; Schatz, 172; Phillips-Fein, 100. “Devoted to overcoming”: Boulware, 32–34. Also see “Memorandum of Interview with L. R. Boulware,” Dec. 23, 1947, LBP. “Keeps Trying”: These and the other headlines are from Boulware, 41–42. “Hard-hitting”: Dec. 2, 1947, memo from Peare to Boulware, LBP.
Salary structure: Boulware, 74–75. 15,000 managers: Boulware, 31. Unionized workers: The 120,000 included members of numerous unions. In addition to the biggest, the International Union of Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (IUE), and its rival United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE), other unions representing GE employees included the International Association of Machinists (IAM), the United Automobile Workers (UAW), the Allied Industrial Workers (AIW), the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), and more. “Proemployee”: “Statement of General Electric Company Prepared For Presentation Before the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare,” Feb. 8, 1954, LBP. “Essential humanity”: Boulware, 109.
“Education campaign”: Phillips-Fein, 100. Typical quarter: This breakdown, from the first quarter of 1953, is found in Boulware, 56. “Toe-to-toe struggle”: Boulware, 57.
“Balanced best”: Boulware, 29–30; Northrup, 30. Boulware called these different stakeholder groups “contributor-claimants.” GE’s president Ralph Cordiner had a slightly different take in New Frontiers for Professional Managers, 23: “A business must be managed in the balanced best interests of all the groups who contribute to its success, but the efforts of all must be focused on the customer. If the customer is well served, share owners, employees, suppliers, dealers, and communities will all prosper.” Also see Reich, Saving Capitalism, 120. “Four parties”: Freeman, Harrison, Wicks, Parmar, and De Colle, Stakeholder Theory, 69. Johnson & Johnson: See “Our Credo Values,” Johnson & Johnson (jnj.com/about-jnj/jnj-credo). Robert Wood Johnson wrote this in 1943. General Motors: “Memorandum on General Motors Profits,” 1950, UAW. Kodak: “SPICE Concept Guides Kodak Business Practices,” Management Letter, Jan. 8, 1971, KHC. The SPICE acronym was coined in the mid-1960s, though the philosophy predated that.
“Socialist enemies”: Boulware, 65. “And their ilk”: “Seek Truman Defeat” by Drew Pearson, Post-Standard of Syracuse, NY, March 20, 1950. Better business climate: Evans, 4. To this end, Boulware’s propaganda machine extended beyond the company and into the “plant communities” where GE operated, as well as to the larger business world. See Boulware, 58–60; Phillips-Fein, 102; Phillips-Fein’s essay in Lichtenstein, American Capitalism, 258–259. Also see, for example, “Steps to Take in City-Wide, Adult Economics & Good Citizenship Program,” Sept. 1949, LBP. Kentucky twang: Evans, 41; Phillips-Fein, 98. “The arithmetic”: Statement of L. R. Boulware to Fort Wayne, Ind., newspaper reporters, Dec. 3, 1952.
Eight years: Evans, 3. “Left and right”: Evans, 239. Reagan would later deliver the same speech, “A Time For Choosing,” on behalf of Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964. A different portion of the same speech is quoted in Perlstein, Before the Storm, 122–123.
“Postgraduate course”: Evans, 4. Also see Rothschild, The Secret to GE’s Success, 116. Economics textbook: Phillips-Fein, 101; Boulware, 35. Boulware encouraged: Boulware, 38; Phillips-Fein, 101; Phillips-Fein’s essay in Lichtenstein, American Capitalism, 258; Evans, 53. Reading lists: Boulware, 36, 38; Evans, 53. The Road Ahead: Boulware, 38; Evans, 54. “Slow poison”: Flynn, The Road Ahead, 126.
DuPont course: Boulware, 34; Phillips-Fein’s essay in Lichtenstein, American Capitalism, 257; Whyte, The Organization Man, 121. Additional series: Details on and quotes from the Carothers’s classes can be found in the General Electric Corporate Administration Records: 1892–1983, SMA. Darling of: Various speeches by Carothers on behalf of the American Liberty League can be found in the Jouett Shouse Collection at the University of Kentucky’s Special Collections Library.
Direct part: Northrup, 53. Carey lost the presidency of the UE in 1941 but became secretary-treasurer of the CIO and would hold that position until 1955. He founded: Schatz, 185; Northrup, 44. In league: Northrup, 40–41. Ardently opposing: Schatz, 183–185. Also see “Carey and the Communists,” The Nation, Sept. 13, 1941; “How Can We Best Combat Communism,” American Forum of the Air, featuring Carey and Rep. Harold Velde, Feb. 15, 1953, IUE. “Want No Part”: This is on the back side of a pamphlet, which says on the cover: “The Next Top Communist Captured by the FBI May Be the UE Organizer at Our Plant Gate,” ILIR. Carey often accused GE of favoring the UE over the IUE—something the company strenuously denied. Five times: Weir, Workers in America, 376. In 1950, the IUE represented about half of all the unionized workers at GE and Westinghouse; the UE, 10 percent. In 1955, the IUE claimed to represent 100,000 GE workers; the IUE represented about 20,000.
Common enemy: In 1953, in what became known as “the Cordiner doctrine,” GE began firing employees “who admitted to being Communists or failed to clear themselves of charges of Communist affiliations leveled by witnesses before congressional committees or other government agencies” (Schatz, 239). “Marched triumphantly”: Northrup, 52–53.
Pejoratively: Evans, 45; Phillips-Fein, 100. Boulware, ix, said “Boluwarism is a term devised by others… largely in an attempt to use a bad-sounding name for that very good thing” GE was trying to do. “Bunch of thieves”: GE News Letter, May 28, 1954. “Feasible and fair”: “Boulwareism: C.I.O. Cries Foul As ‘Tough but Fair’ Wage Policy Spreads,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 3, 1954. “Trying to do right voluntarily”: This is the subtitle of Boulware’s book The Truth About Boulwarism. He used the phrase constantly. See, for instance, “Employee and Plant Community Relations,” a digest of the presentation made to operating managers at the Waldorf-Astoria, New York, Oct. 1–2, 1955, LBP. Also see Rothschild, 117–119.
Do two things: This is spelled out well in “Boulwareism: C.I.O. Cries Foul As ‘Tough but Fair’ Wage Policy Spreads,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 3, 1954. “Now be obvious”: GE Management Letter, June 9, 1954. “Has created”: “GE and CIO Union Opening Talks,” Wall Street Journal, July 19, 1955.
“Captive audiences”: Matles and Higgins, Them and Us, 248. Also cited in Schatz, 174. “Nothing new”: “Boulwareism: C.I.O. Cries Foul As ‘Tough but Fair’ Wage Policy Spreads,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 3, 1954. Also cited in Phillips-Fein’s essay in Lichtenstein, American Capitalism, 255.
Take-it-or-leave-it: Boulware bristled at the term “take-it-or-leave-it,” saying that if the company learned of relevant new information in the course of bargaining, it would then change its offer accordingly. But one purpose: “Boulwareism: C.I.O. Cries Foul As ‘Tough but Fair’ Wage Policy Spreads,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 3, 1954. Liked to brag: From Carey’s New York Times obituary, Sept. 12, 1973. Bantam: Noted in Carey’s New York Times obituary, Sept. 12, 1973. “Break every bone”: Northrup, 84. This was during the 1960 negotiations with GE. Change the ashtrays: 1983 interview with Joseph Mangino, former union business manager, Hall of History Biographical and Oral History Collection, SMA.
“Interunion conflict”: Schatz, 226. Frequent jockeying: Schatz, 226–227. Vote against: Northrup, 53; Schatz, 227. “Treated me”: “On the Picket Line: Strikes at GE,” Berkshire Eagle of Pittsfield, Mass., July 5, 1988. Shut him down: Northrup, 55; Schatz, 227.
Did win: Casey statement on GE Settlement, Sept. 15, 1950, IUE; “A Short History of Collective Bargaining Between the International Union of Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers, CIO, and the General Electric Company,” IUE; union news release on contract settlement, Sept. 2, 1954, IUE. Didn’t receive: Northrup, 55. “Leave scars”: “Boulwareism: C.I.O. Cries Foul As ‘Tough but Fair’ Wage Policy Spreads,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 3, 1954. “Unsound, unwise”: From testimony before the Committee on Education and Labor, May 6, 1953.
“Boulwarism will spread”: From Carey’s keynote address to the local union leaders who would be part of the conference board leading the bargaining with GE, Jan. 1955, IUE. Trying out versions: “Boulwareism: C.I.O. Cries Foul As ‘Tough but Fair’ Wage Policy Spreads,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 3, 1954.
“Companywide strike”: Berkshire Evening Eagle of Pittsfield, Mass., March 25, 1955. “Was thin”: Northrup, 63. Record earnings: “GE’s First-Half Net Gained 9%, Sales 5% Over ‘54,” Wall Street Journal, July 22, 1955. “Staggering”: July 25, 1955, memo from Lasser to Carey, IUE. “Long-term peace”: Northrup, 63.
Bold demand: “Union to Demand G.E. Annual Wage,” New York Times, July 19, 1955; “G.E., Union Open Talks on G.A.W.,” New York Herald Tribune, July 20, 1955; “IUE Begins Talks With GE For Wage Plan, Pay Boost,” CIO News, July 18, 1955. Also see “1955 Economic and Contract Proposals Submitted by the Negotiating Committee IUE-CIO GE Conference Board to General Electric Company,” July 19, 1955, IUE. “Every respect”: “Negotiations Open,” GE Employee Relations News Letter, July 20, 1955. Carey fell ill: Northrup, 63. Six-foot-three: Evans, 41. Prenegotiation: Northrup, 63.
“Scurrilous attacks”: This passage is excerpted from minutes of the negotiations, July 28, 1955, IUE.
Didn’t get: The company did agree to a contract reopener in 1958 to again explore the issues of job security and the protection of income of laid-off workers. Company agreed: See “Summary of Major Economic Gains,” Aug. 12, 1955, IUE. Also see Aug. 12, 1955, letter from Carey and John Callahan to IUE locals recommending approval of the agreement, IUE. “Not happy”: This quotation, as well as Day’s reply, is from minutes of the negotiations, Aug. 10, 1955, IUE.
Nearly 20 percent: Union news release announcing the new contract, Aug. 12, 1955, IUE. “Take this”: “On the Picket Line: Strikes at GE,” Berkshire Eagle of Pittsfield, Mass., July 5, 1988. Also see Evans, 135–136. Carey called it: As noted in, among other places, “The Splendid Settlement,” Time, Aug. 22, 1955. This language was also highlighted in the union news release announcing the new contract, Aug. 12, 1955, IUE. The New York Times had a less kind assessment, saying that “observers feel that the IUE bargaining team was ‘outslicked’ and outmaneuvered by the GE negotiators” (“The Guaranteed Wage: An Analysis of Success and Failure of 2 Unions in Jobless Benefits Drive,” Aug. 16, 1955). “Are maturing”: “The Splendid Settlement,” Time, Aug. 22, 1955. “Better foundations”: Union news release announcing the new contract, Aug. 12, 1955, IUE.
Rochester Trust: “‘Twas D-Day for Kodak Workers,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 15, 1955. Mammoth: Kodak Park spread over 1,200 acres. Largest wage dividend: Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 15, 1955; “Kodak Pays $28 Million Wage Bonus,” Rochester Times-Union, March 14, 1955. Notably, Kodak shareholders didn’t like the wage dividend, saying it cut into their returns. For a discussion of this and other challenges with the formula, see Jacoby, Modern Manors, 79–80. “Smugtown, USA”: See the book of that name by Gerling.
“Big financial event”: “The Prodigious Life of George Eastman,” Life, April 26, 1954. Bedroom suites: Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 13, 1955. Electric range: Rochester Times-Union, March 14, 1955. Worsted suits: Rochester Times-Union, March 14, 1955. “Will Call”: “’Twas D-Day for Kodak Workers,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 15, 1955. Monroe County Savings: Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 13, 1955. First Federal: Rochester Times-Union, March 14, 1955. Rochester Savings: Rochester Times-Union, March 12, 1955. Security Trust: Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 13, 1955. Originally conceived: Brayer, 353. “Your good fortune”: Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 13, 1955.
“Get a bonus”: Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 13, 1955. Heinrich Motors: Rochester Times-Union, March 14, 1955. All held: As advertised in the Rochester Times-Union and Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 11–14, 1955. “Most important reasons”: Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, April 26, 1955.
106–107 “As best it could”: “Eastman Kodak” by Geneva Seybold, National Industrial Conference Board, June 1958, KHC. “Paramount consideration”: “Kodak’s Industrial Relations Objectives and Where We Stand” by C. P. Cochrane, Oct. 1953, KHC.
About $1,000: “Benefits Set Record at Kodak,” Rochester Times-Union, March 26, 1956. For 1955, total employee benefits totaled $85.4 million. For a summary of employee benefits at Kodak through the 1950s, see Jacoby, Modern Manors, 78. Began to offer: Corporate news release, Sept. 3, 1953, KHC. “Some Aspects of Kodak’s Retirement Program,” Sept. 1955, KHC. “Hardly convey”: Remarks by D. E. McConville before the American Management Association Special Conference on Employee Benefits, March 5–7, 1958, KHC.
Golf course: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 80. Recreation center: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 80. It sponsored: Letter to Kodak Office employees, obtained Nov. 1956 from industrial relations, KHC. Company teams: “Bowling at Eastman Kodak Company,” KHC. The American Bowling Congress came to Rochester in 1956. “Highly complex age”: Untitled 1964 statement by Dr. Louis K. Eilers, KHC. Automatic lanes: “Bowling at Eastman Kodak Company,” KHC.
On installment: “Easy and Practical Way to Buy Stocks,” Changing Times: The Kiplinger Magazine, Feb. 1966. “Buy gasoline”: “The Quinby Plan,” Time, Oct. 19, 1953. “Dollars, rabbits”: Letter from Quinby published in Changing Times: The Kiplinger Magazine, Aug. 1951.
Born in 1898: Quinby obituary, Rochester Times-Union, Oct. 25, 1982. A gentleman: All biographical details, unless otherwise noted, are from 2012 interviews by the author with Quinby’s children, Congreve Quinby and Linda Letson. On a yacht: “After 28 Years—$56.1 Million!” The Brighton-Pittsford Post of Pittsford, N.Y., Oct. 27, 1966.
“Salesman by nature”: From a 2012 interview by the author with Congreve Quinby. As World War II ended: As noted in “The Quinby Plan,” Time, Oct. 19, 1953. Decade later: “Quinby Accounts Up 38% in 1955; Growth Reported,” The Daily Record of Rochester, N.Y., Jan. 23, 1956.
Other corporations: “The Quinby Plan,” Time, Oct. 19, 1953. Payroll deduction: Time, Oct. 19, 1953. Ten largest: “Quinby Accounts Up 38% in 1955; Growth Reported,” The Daily Record of Rochester, N.Y., Jan. 23, 1956. “Bales of money”: 2012 author interview with Congreve Quinby.
“Thinking time”: Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Feb. 15, 1948.
“Comparatively simple”: Gerling, 1.
“The deeper sense”: Davenport, U.S.A. The Permanent Revolution, 66–68. Also quoted, in part, in Miller and Nowak, The Fifties, 107. “People’s Capitalism”: Miller and Nowak, 111–112. The term, they note, was coined by the Advertising Council. Also see Saval, 163; Metzgar, Striking Steel, 218–219.
Tens of millions: In the late 1950s, the poverty rate for all Americans was 22.4 percent, or 39.5 million individuals, according to the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan. “Inequality and deprivation”: Galbraith, The Affluent Society, 239. These concerns are also noted in Miller and Nowak, 121–122. “Unskilled workers”: Harrington, The Other America, 25. Also see Davis and Wessel, Prosperity, 69–72; Miller and Nowak, 123; Weil, The Fissured Workplace, 40. Noting that “women and minorities still struggled for political equality and economic opportunity,” Reich (Supercapitalism, 16) calls the period from 1945–1975 the “Not Quite Golden Age.”
Fewer than: Reich, Supercapitalism, 29. Over the course of the decade, the portion of the US labor force classified as self-employed shrank from 26 percent to just 11 percent (Miller and Nowak, 116). Half of the nation’s: Reich, Supercapitalism, 29. Around the globe: Miller and Nowak, 116. For export: From 1946–78, in nearly every category of capital goods, the United States typically had a trade surplus, which grew substantially beginning in the early 1950s. In consumer goods, the United States typically had a deficit from 1925 to 1938, and then a postwar surplus that lasted until 1959 (“Trends in United States International Trade and Investment Since World War II” by William H. Branson, Herbert Giersch, and Peter G. Peterson in Feldstein, The American Economy in Transition, 230–231).
Badly damaged: “Since the true globalization of competition was just beginning in many industries in the 1950s and 1960s, it is hard to overestimate the early mover advantages that accrued to those nations that were in a position to exploit them in the early postwar years because their economies had not been damaged,” Porter writes in The Competitive Advantage of Nations, 545. Also see Cappelli, 75. Military-industrial complex: This was from Eisenhower’s speech of Jan. 17, 1961, in which he warned: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.” 20 percent: Miller and Nowak, 117. Also see Reich, Supercapitalism, 42–43. Outstripped: Hall and Rosenberg, Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, 696. Come to rely: Hall and Rosenberg, Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, 696.
Nation’s 16 million: History and Timeline of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, US Department of Veterans Affairs (benefits.va.gov/gibill/history.asp). Not all scholars agree on the impact of the legislation. “There is still considerable debate over whether the 1944 GI Bill had a large direct effect on education or simply enabled those who were drafted to achieve the education they would have attained had they not served in the military” (Goldin and Katz, The Race Between Education and Technology, 238). “Marked gains”: Hession and Sardy, Ascent to Affluence, 821. The authors cite other factors for enhanced productivity, as well, including the effects of mass production, investments in capital equipment, and advances in technology.
Productivity soared: Labor productivity grew by a robust 3 percent annually during the 1950s, while total factor productivity—a broader measure that accounts for effects in total output not caused by traditionally measured inputs of labor and capital—grew during the decade by an impressive 1.4 percent a year (Nouriel Roubini and David Backus, Lectures in Macroeconomics, Stern School of Business, New York University). Also see Davis and Wessel, 64. Large boosts: Between 1947 and 1958, steel workers saw a 111 percent rise in hourly earnings; those in autos, 80 percent; and those building machinery, 81 percent (from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics data found in CWP). Up 54 percent: “Compensation per full-time equivalent employee in all industries: 1929–1994,” Sutch and Carter, 2–283. “Big fringes”: “Higher Wages, Fewer Strikes,” Business Week, Dec. 31, 1955. Also see “Fringes: Benefits or Burdens” by Warren A. Lacke, a monograph from the 35th NAM Institute on Industrial Relations, KC; “Health, Insurance and Pension Plans in Union Contracts,” Monthly Labor Review, Sept. 1955; “Fringe Benefits,” The New Republic, June 15, 1963. Almost half: Reich, Supercapitalism, 35. Also see Hacker, The Divided Welfare State, 132. “New peak”: “A Survey of American Labor During 1955,” Monthly Labor Review, Feb. 1956. “Avail yourself”: Oct. 29, 1959 letter from the company’s Employees’ Retirement Plan Committee to Ralph Hayes, RHP.
On cars: Davis and Wessel, 66; Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 374–393. Levittown-style: Halberstam, The Fifties, 134–143; Davis and Wessel, 66; Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 363–370. TVs: Davis and Wessel, 61; Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 419–427. Jet travel: Davis and Wessel, 69; Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 393–400. Also see Samuelson, The Good Life and Its Discontents, 38–39, on the rise of jet travel and nine other of the “most influential changes in consumer products and services since the war.” Easy credit: Miller and Nowak, 118–119; Halberstam, The Fifties, 506. Madison Avenue: In 1949, total ad spending on television stood at $12.3 million; by 1951, that had climbed to $128 million (Halberstam, The Fifties, 501). “Frame of mind”: Miller and Nowak, 118.
Final steps: Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 319–320. Good-sized portion: Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 352. Less than half: Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 357. Two toured: Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 357. Also see Greenhouse, 76. “Any steelworker”: Kitchen Debate transcript via TeachingAmericanHistory.org.
“Lethal desires”: Galbraith, 115. Also quoted, in part, in Davis and Wessel, 67.
“Old barricades”: “Industry and Labor: A New Era?” New York Times Magazine, Aug. 7, 1955. At the same time, Raskin did caution that “there remain many areas in which mistrust and divergent economic philosophies block a genuine partnership between employers and their unionized employees.” “Numbed by martinis”: “How Top Executives Live,” Fortune, July 1955. Top rate: “Historical Top Bracket and Rate,” Tax Policy Center, Urban Institute and Brookings Institution. “Democratic luxury”: Tedlow and Jones, The Rise and Fall of Mass Marketing, 14.
In the 1940s: “The Great Compression: The Wage Structure in the United States at Mid-Century” by Claudia Goldin and Robert A. Margo, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Feb. 1992. Also see Noah, The Great Divergence, 19–22; Davis and Wessel, 64–65. Same narrowing: Noah, 20. Government intervention: Davis and Wessel, 64. War Labor Board: Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 298. Twenty-five years: “A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, revised April 2014. Unrivaled age: Piketty, 294. “More remarkable”: Noah, 21.
Its debut: San Francisco lawyer and economist Louis O. Kelso created the first ESOP. See “The Origin and History of the ESOP and Its Future Role as a Business Succession Tool,” The Menke Group. Also see Kelso and Adler, The Capitalist Manifesto; Lawler and O’Toole, America at Work, 275–277. Hundreds of other: “Profit-Sharing: Profit or Loss?” by Peter F. Drucker, New York Times Magazine, Oct. 15, 1961. Another 34,000 or so plans were sometimes called “profit-sharing,” Drucker noted, but really were executive pension plans. About half: “Back to the Future: A Century of Compensation” by G. T. Milkovich and J. Stevens, Cornell University, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies, 1999.
“Most sought-after”: “The Scanlon Plan,” Time, Sept. 26, 1955. Although Scanlon was in great demand, he suffered from a severe bronchial condition and his health was deteriorating badly at the time the article was published. He would pass away in Feb. 1956. The son of: Biographical details are from “Joseph N. Scanlon: The Man and the Plan” by Daniel Wren, Journal of Management History, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2009. Also see “The Steelworkers” by John Chamberlain, Fortune, Feb. 1944; “Joe Scanlon Tells the Experts How” by John Chamberlain, Philadelphia Record, Jan. 2, 1944.
Nearly went under: “Joseph N. Scanlon: The Man and the Plan” by Daniel Wren, Journal of Management History, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2009. “Develop some method”: As quoted in “Worker Participation on Production Problems” by George P. Shultz, Personnel, Nov. 1951. Also quoted, in part, in Wren, “Joseph N. Scanlon: The Man and the Plan.”
“Gainsharing”: Blinder, Paying for Productivity, 32–33; Collins, Gainsharing and Power, 7–22; Bar-Haim, Participation Programs in Work Organizations, 43–49. Also see “The Difference Between Gainsharing & Profit Sharing,” Masternak & Associates. “Driving for”: Lesieur, The Scanlon Plan, 12–13.
Three crucial elements: Frost, Wakely, and Ruh, The Scanlon Plan, 6–14. Baseline ratio: The formula was meant to be adjusted to fit the situation at hand. A manufacturer, for example, might use the ratio of labor costs to the value of production while a food warehouse might use man hours per ton of food processed. “Like to see”: Lesieur, 42. “Deeply rooted faith”: Lesieur, 5–6.
“Cheerio”: Aug. 6, 1954, letter from Scanlon to E. J. Lever, JSP. Give up that control: See “Worker Participation on Production Problems” by George P. Shultz, Personnel, Nov. 1951. Ripped off: At Industrial Tape Corporation, for instance, the employees believed “quite strongly that they have made a distinct contribution” to enhance productivity, Scanlon said. But their “earnings have been to a great extent extremely limited” because of the mathematical model being used. For more, see the July 20, 1953, letter from Scanlon to Raymond A. Nash of Industrial Tape, JSP.
Cornelius Company: May 21, 1953, letter from Scanlon to journalist Russell W. Davenport, JSP. Herman Miller: June 27, 1950, letter from Carl Frost to Scanlon, JSP. Adamson: See “Every Man a Capitalist” by John Chamberlain, Life, Dec. 23, 1946.
LaPointe: “Enterprise for Everyman” by Russell W. Davenport, Fortune, Jan. 1950; “The Lapointe Machine Tool Company and the Steelworkers” by George P. Shultz and Robert Crisara in Golden and Parker, Causes of Industrial Peace, 257–281; “Labor Peace at Lapointe: Bonus Plan Boosts Wages and Profits,” Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 6, 1956. More than 500: “Enterprise for Everyman” by Russell W. Davenport, Fortune, Jan. 1950. Also see Shultz and Crisara in Golden and Parker, 268. 60 percent: “The Scanlon Plan,” Time, Sept. 26, 1955. 18 percent: “Enterprise for Everyman” by Russell W. Davenport, Fortune, Jan. 1950. Job security: Shultz and Crisara in Golden and Parker, 276. “Definite change”: “Incentive Compensation and Increased Productivity,” remarks of Edward M. Dowd at the 355th Meeting of the Conference Board, JSP.
When everybody: Despite all of the positive press the Scanlon Plan received, it was used minimally. Only about sixty companies had signed up for it by 1955, not one of them a giant of American industry. Advocates contended that the significance of what Joe Scanlon had designed lay not in its numbers, but in how it tore down an unwelcome wall between employer and employee. The Scanlon Plan has “actually solved the question of a stake and incentive for the wage earner with no trace of paternalism or ‘do-goodism,’” said the journalist Russell Davenport. Also see “The Scanlon Plan,” Time, Sept. 26, 1955. The limits of the Scanlon Plan are explored in “Forty Years of Scanlon Plan Research: A Review of the Descriptive and Empirical Literature” by Michael Schuster, International Yearbook of Organizational Democracy, 1983.
Welfare system: As characterized in, among others, “The Politics of Economic Security: Employee Benefits and the Privatization of New Deal Liberalism” by Jennifer Klein, Journal of Policy History, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2004; Hacker, The Divided Welfare State, 132.
New GE plan: Details are described in “Family Medical Care Under Three Types of Health Insurance” by the School of Public Health and Administrative Medicine, Columbia University for the Foundation on Employee Health, Medical Care, and Welfare, 1962.
Eight-year-old: “G.E.’s Experience with Comprehensive Health Insurance” by E. S. Willis, Monthly Labor Review, June 1958.
Eight in ten: In one survey, more than 80 percent of employees indicated that they were “very well satisfied” or “fairly well satisfied” with the plan. See “Family Medical Care Under Three Types of Health Insurance” by the School of Public Health and Administrative Medicine, Columbia University for the Foundation on Employee Health, Medical Care, and Welfare, 1962. If there was any party left wanting, it was the Electrical Workers union, the IUE. From its perspective, GE’s insurance plan was a big black box, and the union’s inability to peek inside at the financial details was a source of great frustration. Because GE was the legal policyholder, it was also the company—and not the union or the workers themselves—that received millions of dollars annually in dividends, which Metropolitan Life shoveled out as an inducement to buy its products. For more on this, see Klein, 210; “The Politics of Economic Security: Employee Benefits and the Privatization of New Deal Liberalism” by Jennifer Klein, Journal of Policy History, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2004; “The Business of Health Security: Employee Health Benefits, Commercial Insurers, and the Reconstruction of Welfare Capitalism, 1945–1960” by Jennifer Klein, International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 58, Fall 2000. In June 1957, labor leader George Meany attacked GE before a Senate subcommittee for GE’s possible conflicts of interest, noting that two company directors—Phil Reed and Robert Woodruff—were also on the board of Metropolitan Life Insurance (July 11, 1957, letter from Reed to Woodruff, RWP). “Been destroyed”: As quoted in “Family Medical Care Under Three Types of Health Insurance.”
The private sector: Derickson, Health Security for All, 118; “The Politics of Economic Security: Employee Benefits and the Privatization of New Deal Liberalism” by Jennifer Klein, Journal of Policy History, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2004.
A rarity: Starr, 242. Sickness benefits: Starr, 242. Some companies: Starr, 200–202. Principal duties: Starr, 203. States and cities: Starr, 240. Unlike in Europe: Starr, 240.
Led the charge: Starr, 243–244; Derickson, 8; Klein, 11. Receive coverage for: Starr, 244–245. Welfare capitalism: Jacoby, Modern Manors, 4. Tellingly: Starr, 250–251. Forerunner: Mizruchi, 28; Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, 84.
Positioning themselves: Starr, 249. “No remedy”: Derickson, 12–13. “Pitted both”: Starr, 251.
Who feared: Starr, 252–253, 265–266; Derickson, 12. “Dangerous device”: Starr, 253. Also see Hacker, The Divided Welfare State, 195–196.
Mostly moribund: Starr, 257. Bigger concern: Starr, 258. “Moderate means”: Derickson, 44, quoting Michael Davis, a member of the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care.
Committee on the Cost: See Derickson, 41; Klein, 102. Localities contribute: Starr, 265. “Incitement to revolution”: Starr, 266; Derickson, 46. “Utopian fantasies”: Derickson, 46.
Wasn’t as vital: Starr, 266–267; Derickson, 50. Wouldn’t be included: Klein, 118. Starr, 269; Derickson, 65–68; Hacker, The Great Risk Shift, 40–41; Hacker, The Divided Welfare State, 206–212. “So many telegrams”: Marmor, The Politics of Medicare, 4. Also see Klein, 119.
AFL favored: Derickson, 73–74; Starr, 266. Social-democratic agenda: Boyle, Organized Labor and American Politics, 217–218; Moody, Injury to All, 39; Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home, 32. “List of luxuries”: Derickson, 81; Klein, 101. Greenberg was speaking at the National Health Conference, a landmark event, in July 1938.
He toyed: Starr, 277. “Can’t do it”: Starr, 279.
Authored a bill: Derickson, 87–88; Starr, 280; Klein, 160. President Truman: Starr, 281–282; Derickson, 93; Klein, 202. “Let the people”: Derickson, 94. “The keystone”: Starr, 285. Also see Hacker, The Divided Welfare State, 227–228.
Backed by millions: Starr, 287. Government itself: See “Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance and the Promise of Health Insurance Reform” by Thomas C. Buchmueller and Alan C. Monheit, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 14839, April 2009. War Labor Board: Starr, 311; Gottschalk, The Shadow Welfare State, 42. During the war: Starr, 311.
120–121 Court’s ruling: Klein, 216; Gottschalk, 48; “Management Faces the Pension Problem,” National Association of Manufacturers, Oct. 1950, KC. Prime catalyst: Derickson, 112, 124–125; Starr, 312–313. Not that labor was of a uniform mind on the issue. “In a surprising twist, the AFL craft unions continued to push hard for national health insurance while the industrial unions associated with the CIO quickly accepted the privatization” of medical benefits (Gottschalk, 43–44). “Fringe concern”: “The UAW-CIO and the Problem of Medical Care,” remarks by Harry Becker before the Medical Care Section of the American Public Health Association, Nov. 2, 1950, UAW. By 1954: Starr, 313. Also see Gottschalk, 43. Like Kodak: Derickson, 112; Klein, 227. Made it official: Section 106 was enacted in 1954 as part of a comprehensive revision of the Internal Revenue Code. See Starr, 333; Derickson, 110; “The Tax Exemption of Employer-Provided Health Insurance” by Jeremy Horpedahl and Harrison Searles, Mercatus on Policy, Mercatus Center, George Mason University, July 2013.
Fastest-growing plans: Starr, 327; Klein, 226–228. A tether: “The Business of Health Security: Employee Health Benefits, Commercial Insurers, and the Reconstruction of Welfare Capitalism, 1945–1960” by Jennifer Klein, International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 58, Fall 2000. See also “The Politics of Economic Security: Employee Benefits and the Privatization of New Deal Liberalism” by Jennifer Klein, Journal of Policy History, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2004.
Remained uninsured: Derickson, 122–127; Starr, 333; Klein, 247. After the passage: See “Building a National Health-Care System,” Committee for Economic Development, April 1973. Had to pay: In 1958, GE paid 43 percent of an average family’s $241 in medical bills—far below the 75 percent to 85 percent promised in its “comprehensive” plan, according to “Family Medical Care Under Three Types of Health Insurance” by the School of Public Health and Administrative Medicine, Columbia University for the Foundation on Employee Health, Medical Care, and Welfare, 1962. Klein, 202, explains one reason for this is that commercial indemnity insurers used “experience rating,” as opposed to the “community rating” system that the original Blue Cross providers used. This meant that workers in the same firm would pay different rates depending on their medical histories. “By necessity, then, coverage had to be limited.” “Full coverage”: Klein, 202. Gottschalk, 48, notes that some industries—namely, autos and steel—did agree to pay the full cost of health benefits by the early 1960s.
Some 28,000: “GE Comprehensive Insurance Plan Started 10 Years Ago,” GE Employee Relations News, July 12, 1965. Also see Somers and Somers, Doctors, Patients, and Health Insurance, 383. Coca-Cola: The company adopted such a plan in Feb. 1957. See “Brief Summary of Major Medical Expense Plan for Personnel of the Coca-Cola Company,” RHP. “Invitation to larceny”: Somers and Somers, 385. Also see Klein, 202, 228.
“New meaning”: “Impact of Private Pension Funds,” Business Week, Jan. 31, 1959. Also see “GM Paces the U.S. Pension Parade,” Life, June 5, 1950. Regarding the phenomenal growth of pension funds through the 1950s, see Greenhouse, 283. “Real security”: “The Mirage of Pensions” by Peter F. Drucker, Harper’s, Feb. 1950. Also see Lowenstein, 25. Tens of millions: “Impact of Private Pension Funds,” Business Week, Jan. 31, 1959.
“Magnitude and liberality”: As quoted in a June 30, 1959, memorandum from GE’s corporate secretary, Ray Luebbe, to the board, PRP. 2 percent: “Average Annual Inflation Rates by Decade,” InflationData.com (inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation/DecadeInflation.asp).
Increase greatly: “Employee-Benefit Plans, 1975” by Martha Remy Yohalem, Social Security Bulletin, Nov. 1977. Proportion of Americans: “Persons with hospital and surgical benefits, by type of private insurance plan: 1939–1992,” Sutch and Carter, 2–550. “The exception”: Derickson, 129.
Golden glint: “Glittering Symbol,” Newsweek, Dec. 6, 1954; “G.M. 50 Millionth a Gold Chevrolet,” New York Times, Nov. 24, 1954. “Have money: As quoted in corporate news release, March 3, 1955, UAW. In 1952: “New Pitcher for GM,” Newsweek, Dec. 1, 1952.
“Key variable”: “Business Statesmanship,” New York Times, Jan. 21, 1954. For the company: “G.M.’s 1955 Profit Exceeds a Billion, Setting U.S. Mark,” New York Times, Feb. 3, 1956. The economy: See “Appraising the Business Outlook,” remarks delivered by Harlow H. Curtice to a luncheon for business leaders, Jan. 16, 1956, SA.
“Curtice was aware”: “Man of the Year: First Among Equals,” Time, Jan. 2, 1956.
Its 57 officers: “Compensation of General Motors Officers and Directors, 1947–1969” based on GM proxy statements, UAW. Led the way: “Executive Pay: Up With the Boom,” Business Week, June 2, 1956. Pale in comparison: “Executive Compensation: A New View from a Long-Term Perspective, 1936–2005” by Carola Frydman and Raven E. Saks, Finance and Economics Discussion Series Divisions of Research & Statistics and Monetary Affairs Federal Reserve Board, July 6, 2007.
Stock-purchase plan: “GM: Making Capitalists, Raising Money,” Business Week, July 16, 1955. Also see “The Workers Turn Into Owners,” Business Week, May 11, 1957, which describes other stock-purchase programs, including General Electric’s. “Loyal to GM”: “I’m with GM,” a corporate handbook for salaried personnel, Oct. 1956, SA.
124–125 Tried to interest: “GM: Making Capitalists, Raising Money,” Business Week, July 16, 1955. Would win: “GM Labor Agreement Chronology,” March 20, 1970, UAW. Several years: Reuther had been touting a guaranteed wage since 1947. In September 1951, the UAW established a staff committee to formally engage in an intensive study of the GAW (“Progress Report on Guaranteed Annual Wage Preparations,” Dec. 1953, UAW). “More and more”: “Reuther: More and More,” Newsweek, May 30, 1955.
Ninety days: “The Thinking Behind the UAW-CIO Guaranteed Employment Plan” by union research director Nat Weinberg, Michigan Business Review, March 1955. “Maintain the same”: “Questions and Answers About the UAW-CIO Guaranteed Employment Plan,” UAW.
“People above property”: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 284; Barnard, 282. Push the public sector: Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 284. “Reduce their liabilities”: “Fight for the Annual Wage,” Time, Feb. 7, 1955.
“Never resulted”: Undated draft remarks by Walter Reuther to Chamber of Commerce, UAW. Cited companies: “A Pay Check Every Week of the Year,” May 1952. Also see “The Guaranteed Wage,” Fortune, April 1947. The 1890s: “Supplemental Unemployment Benefits: Problems of the Ford Plan,” Indiana Law Journal, Vol. 31, No. 3, Spring 1956.
March and August: “Seasonality in the Automobile Industry,” union analysis, June 5, 1950, UAW. “Never faced up”: April 1, 1953, interview notes with Laseau, RHGP.
“Allow ourselves”: March 11, 1955, letter to Frederic Donner from Brown, DBP. “Dread of the unknown”: Drucker, The New Society, 232. “Empty a promise”: “The Responsibilities of Management” by Peter F. Drucker, Harper’s, Nov. 1954. “Plan for GAP”: “Fight for the Annual Wage,” Time, Feb. 7, 1955. Also see “GAW: The Showdown—the Meaning,” Business Week, April 9, 1955.
First at Ford: Barnard, 284; Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 285–286; “Opening the Door for GAW,” Business Week, June 4, 1955. With supplemental unemployment benefits: “Labor’s New Victory” by Sumner H. Slichter, The Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 1955; Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 285–286. Three more years: “General Motors Ups the Bet,” Newsweek, July 4, 1955.
Companies followed: “Supplementary Unemployment Benefits of Ford and General Motors: Analysis and Implications,” an undated master’s thesis by Alexander G. Ayers Jr., Columbia University. Only 2 percent: “Growth in Employee-Benefit Plans: 1950–65” by Walter Kolodrubetz, Social Security Bulletin, April 1967.
“Socialistic state”: As quoted in “Labor’s New Victory” by Sumner H. Slichter, The Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 1955. “GAW-ful fraud”: Economic Council Letter, Sept. 1, 1955.
“Can’t read English”: Sept. 19, 1955, letter from Sloan to Donaldson Brown, DBP. Also see Lowenstein, 26–28. “Get everything”: “The G.A.W. Man,” Time, June 20, 1955. Pittsburgh Plate Glass: “Supplementary Unemployment Benefits of Ford and General Motors: Analysis and Implications,” an undated master’s thesis by Alexander G. Ayers Jr., Columbia University. “Own security”: Sept. 26, 1955, memo from Reuther to all international union executive board members and department heads, UAW.
On the cover: “The G.A.W. Man,” Time, June 20, 1955.