NOTICE
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted by The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service . The reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview.

RESTRICTIONS
This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Opened 1975
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

Tape Reference:

FMCS-OH 79, 80, 81

The Columbia University Oral History Research Office and the Harry S. Truman Library also have interviews with Dr. Steelman.

[1]

ROSS: The following interview with Dr. John R. Steelman was conducted on behalf of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service on Thursday afternoon, February 27, 1975. The interview took place in L. Lawrence Schultz's office, Main Labor Building, Washington, D.C. The interviewer is Martha Ross.

Well, good afternoon, Dr. Steelman. It's a great pleasure to see you today.

STEELMAN: I'm very glad to get back to my old stomping grounds. (Chuckle)

ROSS: Well, fine. I wonder if we could begin by having you tell me a little bit about how you first became interested and involved in labor-management relations. I believe it was back in Alabama.

STEELMAN: Yes. Like most of my life, it was sort of an accident. I was teaching sociology and economics in Alabama and I had a habit of roaming around over weekends of picking up new material to tell my students about, and so occasionally they'd have a strike in the coal mines, and I'd find out all about it and talk to my students about it. And it was really a strike in the steel mills up around Birmingham that led me actually to get into this work.

ROSS: Hmmm.

[2]

STEELMAN: I had been class advisor for four years and my class was graduating, and I suggested to the president of the college, Dr.[Oliver Cromwell] Carmichael that we ought to invite the first woman cabinet officer in the land, Madame [Frances] Perkins, to be our commencement speaker. And he said, "Oh, I doubt if she'd come," and I said, "Well, she just might, and I suggest that you write her a letter and invite her to be our commencement speaker." This was 1934. And he did, and she accepted.

So she came and after. the commencement exercises were over, she had four or five hours before her train that would be leaving to take her back to Washington. And since it was my commencement, I was sort of responsible for her during those hours, and there was a committee of strikers from Birmingham who asked to see her to talk to her about the steel strike. She asked my advice as to whether I thought she ought to see them, and I said, "Yes, I think that would be all right. You ought to have a talk with them." And I said, "After they leave, I'll tell you the rest of the story," (Laughter) which sort of surprised her.

So after they left she told me what they had said and then I told her a few things about the strike. And it surprised her greatly as to why a sociology and economics professor--why would he know the details of a steel strike up in Birmingham? Well, the fact is that I suppose through some of my students, probably--through some of my students or somewhere--the word got out among the strikers that they could trust Dr. Steelman. So I would go up on the picket line and talk to the boys, and they would tell me all the things they were up to. They used to get pretty rough up there. Some of them had rifles and they'd shoot up the mountainside and plug a hole in the water tank or something of the sort occasionally, (Laughter) and sometimes they'd get rambunctious and stop up the highway for (Laughter) a certain period of time, so there was a little rough stuff going on. But they trusted me; they'd tell me anything.

And some of my students' parents were connected with the other side--with the management side--and apparently they . . . the word got around that I was all right, so both sides would tell me anything in confidence. So I explained the strike to Miss Perkins and told her many things that the strikers had neglected to tell her. So she said, "Why don't you come up to Washington and help us settle some of these strikes? Do you think you'd be interested?" I thought she

[3]

was just making conversation, and, of course, I said, "Oh, yes, yes, I'm very much interested in that sort of thing." And she left and I forgot it. I assumed she had. As I say, I thought she was just making conversation. And about two weeks, as I recall it, about two weeks after she left I got a telegram wanting to know could I come to Washington at government expense to discuss entering the Conciliation Service? And I was surprised and shocked, but I answered. I couldn't come the day she wanted me, for some reason, and when I got here, she had had to leave the night before to go to San Francisco to some meeting--I believe the Organization of the United Nations or something--and she left word with her assistant, Richardson Saunders, who was the . . . . sort of the budget officer, business manager and her advisor--he had been Budget Officer for New York City before he came to Washington--she left word with him and with her general counsel, who is now Judge Wyzinski of Boston--she left word with both of them to hire Dr. Steelman. Well, they didn't think much of the idea. They were very nice, but very frankly told me, they said, "We think it's a bad mistake. We don't think you ought to accept, because we don't believe a young college professor can even talk the language of these strikers." Well, they didn't know that I came out of the log swamps of Arkansas and Louisiana, (Laughter) and I could talk to anybody in any, language. (Laughter) But they didn't know this, so they said they thought it was a mistake. But they said, "There's no use to beat around the bush. We've got orders to hire you if you'll accept. Will you?" And I said, "Well, I've got to think it over a little, and I've also got to get in touch with my college president, who's half way to Europe." So I sent a cable to Dr. Carmichael and asked him could I have a year's leave of absence. And I got a cable back saying, "Leave of absence granted." Incidentally, that leave of absence has been long delayed. (Laughter) So it really was an accident that I got . . . I came here and got in . . . was hired as a conciliator for one year. And as I say, that year lasted a long while. I was in the government and around Washington, at least thirty five years. I came here to stay a year in 1934 and I left in 1969, so I was slightly delayed here. (Laughter) But the whole thing was accidental.

ROSS: You never got back to college.

STEELMAN: The whole thing was an accident. And it was an accident that I was appointed Director, too. I was appointed Director within a year or so. I went from the top . . . from the newest man to

[4]

the top place in about a year and a half. The way that accident happened has never been written, I'm sure. President Roosevelt decided to appoint Arthur Altmeyer, who was Assistant Secretary of Labor, as the first head of the Social Security Board. And he said to Miss Perkins, "You can name . . : you suggest who you want as Assistant Secretary of Labor. And you think it over and let me know." So Miss Perkins came back and she was talking to Richardson Saunders. She said, "Richardson, the President's going to let me name a successor as Assistant Secretary of Labor." She said, "I'd like to have somebody with some education and . . ." Because in those days there were quite a few around who weren't very well educated. And she said, "I'd like to have somebody who has some education and also who has some common sense and also who has had experience, so that whoever it is can really help me run this department. So here comes another accident. Saunders said, "By the way, I was just around the hall talking to Hugh Kerwin, and how about this young fellow Steelman that you forced us to hire against our better judgment?" She said, "How about him? How is he doing?" And Saunders said, "It's the damndest thing that has ever happened." He said, "Steelman is setting the woods afire settling strikes." He said, "Mr. Kerwin said that last week every night for seven nights in a row, Steelman wired me about a strike settlement from a different state of the union." She said, "Bring him in immediately. He's the one I want."

Now to go back a little, I say that was an accident. Nobody is that good. I've had conciliators work for me who were better conciliators than I am. But I don't care how good they are. I couldn't do that, George Taylor couldn't do that, David Cole couldn't do that. It was just an accident that for seven days in a row I got from one state to another and settled a strike. I couldn't do it again to save my life, and nobody can do it. It was just purely an accident, but it struck Kerwin, and it struck Saunders, so he told Secretary Perkins and it struck her, so she sent for me.

Well, I didn't want any political appointment, and I assumed that that would be considered as one. I considered myself a professional man, and so before . . . I said, "Mr. Kerwin, I just can't come in right now. It's going to take me a week to clean up these strikes I'm working on. Would it be all right if I came in next Monday, or when . . . whatever?" And he said, "Well, I'm sure that's all right. I'll tell the Secretary you're cleaning up some things." Well,

[5]

in the meantime, in addition to cleaning up a few things, I got in touch with William Green, president of the AF of L, I got in touch with John Lewis, I got in touch with the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce--I've forgotten who he was at the time, but they were all friends of mine--in the meantime I'd made friends with them--and I got some of the businessmen that I'd had dealings with in on the deal to put the pressure on the president of the Chamber of Commerce. I had it fixed up with all of them that if I didn't like it in Washington, and I didn't know at the time--I was merely told that they wanted me to come in to Washington to work. I didn't know what they were going to offer me.

ROSS: I see.

STEELMAN: So I had it fixed up so that if I didn't like it here in Washington, I would tip them off and they'd all start raising Cain to get me back as a conciliator. (Laughter) So I came in and the Secretary told me that I could be Assistant Secretary of Labor. I said, "No, thanks." And she was shocked. She said, "Why, it would double your salary. It would be a great honor. You might even succeed me--might be Secretary some day. I'm not going to stay here forever." And I said,
"No, thanks. I don't want any political appointment. " "Why," she said, "it would double your salary, and it would . . ." and so forth. And I said, "No, no." And then I said, "I'll tell you what I'll do, though. Until you find somebody, I'll come and take Mr. Altmeyer's office over, and I'll do his work. I'll help you run the department; I'll do anything I can, but just leave me on the Conciliation payroll." And she said, "At half price?" And I said, "Yes, at half price. Just leave me on the Conciliation payroll."

So I came in . . . I came in to this building as Special Assistant to the Secretary, and I took over Mr. Altmeyer's office. So I helped the Madame run the Department here for--I think about nine months. Anyway, during that nine months, I virtually took the building over, because I out-worked the Secretary. My father had told me when I left home at the age of fourteen to go out in the world to work, he said, "You know, work never really hurt anybody," and he said, "If you'll outwork everybody wherever you go, you can get forward. You'll get up there." And so I always had that in my mind.

So the Secretary . . . people couldn't find her, but they could find me--I worked until three o'clock in the

[6]

morning. People in San Francisco would go to a meeting and get home at midnight, and they thought nothing of calling me up at three o'clock in the morning to discuss the meeting. So people quit calling the Secretary; they just called me, so I had virtually taken the place over. But about nine months later Mr. Kerwin died at nine o'clock one night, and at nine o'clock the next morning I was appointed Acting Director of Conciliation. The reason for the "Acting Director" was that they wanted to get clearance from my senators--my Alabama Senators, who were, I believe Hill and Bankhead. And of course that came very fast, so that's all there was to that, and I was made Director. So, as I say, my coming to Washington in the first place was an accident, my getting called in here from the field to be Assistant Secretary was an accident, and then from there on, why, that's the story.

ROSS: Amazing.

STEELMAN: I liked conciliation work, because I like to deal with human beings, and so it just worked out, but it was really an accident.

ROSS: Could you tell me a little bit about Mr. Kerwin, personally, how he ran the Conciliation Service?

STEELMAN: Yes. Well, he . . . Of course he was here when it was small, and he was a very easy going man-everybody loved him. He spent most of his time talking to different people who would drop in and chat, and they'd chat for an hour or two or three. I've forgotten their name, but there were several labor leaders here in town that he liked and who liked him, and they'd just come by and chat half of the day away. He didn't pay too much attention to the job--he didn't have to in those days. (Laughter) He was very easy-going.

After I was appointed one of his men got in touch with me, or I believe I got in touch with him. One of his men checked into a hotel in New York some three or four years before, and--I would want this kept in confidence for many years to come--but this man . . . I think I called him up, and I said, "What are you working on up there?" And he said, "Well, I'm waiting here for an assignment. Mr. Kerwin sent me here four years ago and told me to stand by for further instructions." And he'd been there waiting ever since. Mr. Kerwin forgot him, see? So that's the kind of . . . (Chuckle) We all loved Mr. Kerwin, but that's a kind

[7]

of a sample of the way he ran the place. (Much laughter) So I called this fellow back and put him to work. I sent him to Philadelphia or somewhere else and started giving him plenty of assignments. (Laughter) But he'd been waiting around three or four years to hear from his boss.

Mr. Kerwin was very easy-going and all . . . everybody loved him. And in his time he probably did the job about the way it ought to have been done. There wasn't much to do. The new unions hadn't come along, so that most of the cases they had back in those days, as far as I know, were cases of a limited number of unions, and so they didn't have too many cases or too much to do. But during the New Deal days, things began to pick up mighty fast. (Laughter)

ROSS: Now what were your immediate plans when you became Director? Obviously you could see that there needed to be changes made.

STEELMAN: Well, yes. I saw that . . . some of the fellows . . . Some had been working and some hadn't. The work wasn't very well distributed, and of course you never can distribute it exactly right, but having been out in the field and having talked to the different conciliators; I knew a number of things that might be tightened up a bit. I found one or two men who were a little lax about their expense accounts. They charged up a few things that I didn't think they ought to charge up and so forth, so I tightened the whole ship up just a little and tried to get everybody busy. Of course, pretty soon thereafter we were . . . everybody was busy anyway, so (Laughter) it worked out pretty good.

ROSS: What about the professional stature of the people who were in the Conciliation Service at the time that you took over?

STEETMAN: Well, there were (Cough) . . . Most of them . . .most of them had a labor background. There were . . . there just weren't any applicants from the other side. There wasn't . . there wasn't anybody, or almost nobody on the industry side had had any experience, and so most of them were former labor leaders--some of them fairly well educated, some not. The man that I was sent out with to train me . . . Mr. Kerwin was a smart man. And he (Chuckle) he said, "You know, Doctor," He said, "I've got a man I'm going to send you out with and I think,"
he said, "he's a good conciliator. He'll rub off on you and,

[8]

"he said, "I'm sure you'll rub something off on him and that'll help him." (Laughter) So he said, "I want to send (Chuckle) the least educated man I have out with the best educated man I have, (Laughter) and see if you don't rub off on each other." (Laughter) It was a man named (Charlie) Richardson. He was an old railroad engineer. He'd been fired in the 1922 railroad strike, as many had, and the union lost I believe it was '22--they lost a big strike. So Commissioner Richardson . . . Kerwin said, "Now, his typewriter is all out of joint--it can't spell." He showed me one or two of his written reports where he had typed and he couldn't spell but, he said, "Don't let that fool you. Richardson is smart and he can settle strikes." Well, I found that Mr. Kerwin was exactly right. Richardson was a wonderful man and a wonderful conciliator. So I trained with him.

Now there was . . . there were those who were better educated and . . . but I don't know that they had any better experience than he had had. And as I say, practically all of them were former labor leaders. For example--and I mention this to make .a point--the fact that the fellow had been a labor leader doesn't necessarily mean he wasn't a good conciliator, or it doesn't necessarily mean that he was pro-labor. Some of the most fair-minded men I've ever seen were former labor leaders, so that doesn't necessarily mean he was prejudiced. There was a man in Chicago named Harry Scheck, who used to be president of the Building Trades Council, I believe, or maybe of the Chicago Labor Council. Yes. I'm sure he was president of the whole Labor Council of Chicago. And in sort of reorganizing the place, I had in mind to transfer Harry Scheck to somewhere else, because I thought maybe it was unfair for a man who had been president of the Labor Council to turn over and try to be an impartial mediator. Well, I let it be known, out around Chicago, that I might transfer Scheck and who do you think got after me right quick, and that's a bunch of business men. They said, "Don't ever move Scheck. He can do more with these labor fellows than anybody else. He can tell them off better than any outsider could. He's as fair a man--you couldn't send us a man who is more fair than Harry Scheck. So leave him alone." See? So I mention that just to show you that when I say nearly all the conciliators were former labor leaders, that doesn't necessarily mean they weren't fair and impartial conciliators, because most of them were. As a matter of fact, I've often recalled this--that the only man I ever remember firing for being unfair was not a former labor leader but a former industrial man.

[9]

ROSS: Hmmm.

STEELMAN: I forget his name, but I had a man come to work for me and he used to work for some company in their labor relations department, and he was so prejudiced against managers that I had to fire him. He wasn't fair. He leaned over backwards when he got to working in the labor relations field. I never knew why, but he just couldn't see both sides. And most of the former labor leaders can see both sides right quickly. They may not like to admit it but they can see them. (Laughter) And I wish I could remember this fellow's name, but he's the only one Iever remember firing for being unfair, and he was not a labor leader but a former business . . . industry man.

ROSS: Hmmm. Did you have any kind of mandate from Secretary Perkins?

STEELMAN: No. I wanted to tell you that, too, because that's never been written and nobody knows it, I don't suppose. But the day I was appointed she sent for me. She wanted to talk to me. She said, "Mr. Steelman," she said, "you know by law I am pro-labor. The law says I am to promote the welfare of labor. That's my job just like the Secretary of Agriculture promotes the farmers and the Secretary of Commerce, et cetera. But, "she said, "by definition,” she said, "I don't know what the law . . . whether there is any law about it, but by definition you can't be pro-anything. You can't be pro-labor, you can't be pro-management, you have to stand in the middle and be fair to everybody. So," she said, "I'm on my side, somebody else is on the other side, you're in the middle. You have your job to do and," she said, "you have my blessing. I
will never try to tell you what to do. I'll never tell you who to hire. I'll never tell you who to fire. I will never butt into your business in any manner whatsoever. God bless you, and if you ever need to talk to me let me know, but you run your business and I'll run mine." And that's the way
we stood.

That leads to another subject, and I may be getting ahead of your questioning here, and that is about the question of the Conciliation Service . . . or being taken out of the Department of Labor.
The Service came out of the original law setting up the Labor Department, where there was a statement that the Secretary of Labor shall have the right to appoint mediators, et cetera. There came to be a lot of discussion in my day about making the Conciliation

[10]

Service independent. Well, it couldn't possibly ever, by law, be made any more independent than I already was, see? As a matter of fact, since then many times under the new law, the Secretary of Labor has had quite a bit to say. But the Secretary of Labor never had anything to say to me, and the business people knew it, the union people knew it, and every time somebody in my day .

You see, I figured that some day the Mediation Service would be an independent agency but not right then, because in those early days I thought this--that I had some psychological advantage in dealing with new union leaders, for example, to say, "Well, here, this is your own Department. We're trying to help you, see? And you listen." The business people, they didn't care, the industry people didn't care where . . . what building I was in--they'd take you for what you are, see? If you're impartial and fair, they know it; if you aren't, they know it. They may think you are when you aren't or vice versa, but in general the industry peopl-- they'd just accept you as you are and deal with you. And the older, experienced union leaders, too. They wouldn't care where you came from, they'd take you as you were, too. But the new fellows who joined the union yesterday and were about to strike today it was a little advantage to me to be able to say, "What are you talking about, man? I'm your own department. Here, you'd better listen to me, see?"

Every time some Senator . . . I remember old Senator [Royal Samuel] Copeland used to . . . every once in a while he'd get excited, he'd want to pass a law taking me out from under the Secretary of Labor. Well, I wasn't under the Secretary of Labor in the first place. But I would stop it, because I'd get somebody . . . two or three times I'd get the president of the Chamber of Commerce to say a word. "Leave Dr. Steelman alone." And I'd get [William] Green or John [L.] Lewis to pass the word down: "Don't be talking about moving Steelman. Leave him where he is. He can do a better job where he is, see?" And so during my day I thought that was best, and I kept it from becoming an independent agency as long as I was here. But later on the thing came up again and the time had arrived when it was perfectly logical. But in my day I was just where I wanted to be, and I was perfectly independent anyway.

ROSS: In other words, I read an article that said in fact you made the Conciliation Service autonomous.

STEELMAN: That's right.

[11]

ROSS: And this was an agreement between you and Secretary Perkins.

STEELMAN: Absolutely. She told me before I ever took the oath of office, "You're the boss. I have nothing to do with you." And the Presiden--President [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt--the only thing he ever did to me was he . . . he was a great one for getting mixed up in labor disputes. He never tried to tell me what to do. He was always . . . every time he had anything to do, he would say, "Can I be of assistance to you in this strike?" And I'd . . . most of the time I'd say, "Well, now Mr. President, you know, that's strange. I was just thinking about you. I'm thinking that within about a week, this situation may be ripe enough and I may have to call on you to help out, if you will. But in the meantime it isn't quite ripe." Then I'd get busy and try to settle it before the week was up! (Laughter)

ROSS: Why was that? (Laughter)

STEELMAN: Well, . . . (Laughter)

ROSS: Tell me about the complications of getting the President involved.

STEELMAN: Well, you don't want to get the President mixed up in things like that if you can help it. (Laughter) The less the President has to do with that kind of thing, the better, for many reasons. First of all, if you use him too often, why, (Pause) it isn't useful. And if you don't use him very often, sometimes he comes in mighty handy, you know, but he was always willing to help. And sometimes he'd offer when we weren't quite ready for him. (Laughter) But (Pause) the further down the line you can settle the better.

For example, you're interested, I'm sure, in the War Labor Board days. The fact that there's somewhere else to go makes it more difficult to settle here, see--it's just logical. So you . . . if the White House gets mixed up in labor disputes as a habit, which finally did almost develop under President Roosevelt, so far as the big ones were concerned--railroads and steel and so forth, then the fellow down the line can't settle it. They get all they can here, and then they go on there, hoping to get a little more, you see. So it's bad to use the White House. And we always tried to . . the further down the line you can settle, the better. Just like if the man out in the field can settle it without bringing it to the Director, why that's better, you

[12]

know. But you just go up the line as far as you have to go, but you're reluctant to use the fellow upstairs (Laughter) whoever he be--the Director or the President.

ROSS: How about attempts--any attempts at political influence on say, appointments or assignments, from people like Congressmen, Senators, during your tenure?

STEELMAN: I had very little, very little. I stood very well with the Congress, and I'll tell you in a minute why I think I did. But I've had a few recommendations, but they would always say, "Dr. Steelman, you understand I'm suggesting this because I've had a little pressure put on me, but you know better than I do who can be a conciliator and who can't. I wouldn't want to force anybody on you." That was the general attitude of the Congress toward me, because they were always very favorable to me. I did have . . . there was a black Congressman from New York
who tried to force me to hire a particular person and (Pause) he threatened me if I didn't hire this particular person. I said, "This man isn't qualified. I've got . . ."

I say a colored man. He was not--he was not a black man, he was a . . . he was a rather a radical Congressman, I forget his name now.

ROSS: [Vito] Marcantonio?

STEELMAN: Marcantonio. Yes, Marcantonio. He's the one who threatened me. And so when he threatened me, I just hung up right in his face and slammed the receiver down right fast, because I wasn't afraid of him. He would be a lone guy on the Hill if he ever tried to fight me, and that's the last I ever heard of him.

ROSS: Hmmm.

STEELMAN: But he tried to--he tried to bully me and I wouldn't stand for it because I had too many friends on the Hill for that kind of stuff. (Laughter) But (Pause) No, I had . . . I had . . . I'd say no political pressure and very few political recommendations.

ROSS: Hmmm.

[13]

STEELMAN: I do recall one political recommendation that I shall never forget because of the way it worked out. It was a man, a Congressman from the Far West on my appropriations committee, and he called me up very reluctantly one day and he said, "Dr. Steelman, I . . . the fact that I'm on your appropriations committee makes me most reluctant to even mention this to you, but I've got a good constituent, a good friend of mine, who is putting a lot of pressure on me, and he wants to see you to see if he can get a job from you." And he said, "Would you see him for me?" And I said, "Well, . . "I said, "who is he and what age man is he? What experience has he had?" "Well," he said, "he's the number one conductor on the Northern Pacific Railroad. He's had a lot of labor relations experience, but he wants to leave the railroad, and he wants a job with you. He's sixty-five years old." I said, "Forget it." I said, "He couldn't stand the pressure that I would put on him. I expect him to work eighteen to twenty hours a day. He couldn't stand it." "Well, all right." He hung up and we're still friends.

Well, a few days later he called me again. He said, "This man insists he wants to talk to you, and he wants to pay his own way to come to Washington. Could you at least see him?" I said, "Well, he'd be wasting his time." "Well," he said, "would you talk to him on the telephone just to get me off the hook?" I said, "Yes, I'll talk to him. Tell him to give me a ring." The guy called me up and in ten minutes he sold himself to me over the telephone so much that I hired him sight unseen. (Laughter) I said, "Any guy that can handle a situation the way he handled me, he's a good . . . he's okay." So I hired him.

He turned out to be one of the most effective men I have ever had work for me, and all during the war I had him located in Hawaii, and he kept things in good shape over there. He worked for me for a number of years. He later was labor relations man for the movie industry. And the day he was eighty-five, he wrote me a letter from Los Angeles and said, "I'm eighty-five today and I played golf and I shot an eighty-five." (Laughter) He could outwork over half of the men I had
with me, even when he was up in his seventies. So I hired him right over the telephone. He talked himself right in, so I had to call the Congressman back and I said, "Congressman, I was wrong all the time. This man is good, and I haven't even seen him." He's the only man I ever hired sight unseen. (Laughter) But I could tell, he was good. (Laughter)

ROSS: What about your relationship with Congress?

[14]

I recall now how it happened. Every once in a while the papers would say that Miss Perkins was about to leave town. Some people didn't like her, so they'd try to get her out of town by spreading rumors. There was a Congressman up on the Hill who got a bright idea to start a movement on the Hill to get President Roosevelt to make me Secretary of Labor. So he sent for me, wanted to know if I could come up to his office. He wanted to talk to me about something important, and he didn't want to be seen down in this department because he might be asked what he was up to, see? So I went up to see him, and he told me what he was up to, and I stopped him right quick. I said, "You don't do any such a thing. I wouldn't be Secretary of Labor for a million dollars a year. I don't want any political appointment. Leave me alone. I'm happy right where I am, and I can do more good where I am. It's my line. Don't be talking to me about taking a Cabinet post."

Well, from him I learned that . . . in fact, he showed me some letters he had about a strike in his district, and he said, "All of us get letters like this. We don't know what to tell the people. So I said, "Well, I'll tell you what you do. When you get a letter and when you get interested in a strike like this, if you get any mail, why, you call me up and talk to me a few minutes on the phone, and I'll tell you that I've got a man on the way or I've got a man out there. You write back and tell them you've been in touch with me, and that puts you in good and that lets the people know that you and I are both trying to do something for them." So I adopted that as a policy.

I didn't wait for them to call me. When I would assign a conciliator to a case in Podunk, I would also inform the Congressman that I had assigned a conciliator to such and such a case. All right. If he got a letter or a telegram from either side, he could ,write and say, "Yes, I know about your situation. In fact, the Director has informed me that he has a man on the way." So, boy, that was great for him, you see. And so I did that.

[15]

One night here in Washington I went to a meeting where Senator [Estes] Kefauver was making a speech in favor of an amendment--of a law he had introduced. He was kind of hep on the British system, and thought we ought to have a law forcing every Cabinet officer to report to Congress, I believe quarterly or something, to come and report to Congress on what he was doing. And Kefauver saw me sitting in the back of the audience and he pointed back and said, "I. see Dr. Steelman sitting back yonder, the Director of the U.S. Conciliation Service. He's the only man in this man's government that I know what he's doing. He keeps me informed on a daily basis of whatever he's doing in my state." And he thought that was great. (Chuckle)

Well, you can see why if anybody tried to hurt me on the Hill, he'd got in trouble right away! (Laughter) I never had a question about my budget. Twice they gave me more than I asked for, which I think is a record. I don't believe any other agency in the federal government has ever had the Congress say, "We don't think you asked for enough. We think we ought to add some more here and we want you to do a little educational work or this, that and the other." Twice my budget was up from what I asked for and they said, "We want you to have this. We think you ought to have it."

One time, one time Congressman [Malcolm C.] Tarver, who was chairman of my subcommittee, Tarver of Georgia, a nice old gentleman--one time he got mad at me about something that I had nothing to do with, and he cut my appropriation, I think, by $10,000. We dealt with little figures in those days anyway. I never did ask for much, just enough to pay my staff. I never wanted to build up any big bureaucracy, and they knew it, so the Congress would give me whatever I asked for. They knew I just wanted enough to pay my men. There was a textile strike in Georgia, and the parties agreed on everything but wages and they agreed to arbitrate wages. And they, as I recall it, agreed on an arbitrator. I didn't even appoint the arbitrator. If I had, I wouldn't have known anything about the details, you know. I don't think I even appointed him, but since I'd had a man on the case up to the point of the arbitration, Tarver . . . probably some employer had gotten sore about the thing--somebody told Tarver and gave him the impression that it was my fault the way the case came out. So Tarver got sore and he cut my appropriation, and some of his own members called me up and tipped me off that Tarver wanted to cut me by ten thousand. And they said, "If you want it back, why, you know how to get it back." And I said, "I
sure do." (Laughter)

[16]

So Tarver cut me--I think it was ten, maybe it was twenty-five thousand. Anyway, I appealed it to the Senate and then got it back, except in the meantime I saved, I think five thousand, because I had a vacancy and didn't fill it for a while and so forth. So When I went before the Senate I said, "I want this restored." And they said, "How much do you want?"* And I said, "Well, I saved so much but so here's what I need to pay my staff, you see--so it is." So I never had any trouble. The chairman of the Senate committee was an old Senator from Tennessee.

ROSS: McKellar?

STEELMAN: McKellar. Kenneth McKellar. And the day I appeared before the Senate, McKellar was on a rampage. He was knocking everybody off. I remember the Wage and Hour Division had appealed for an increase. And he said, "How many cases have you got?" And I've forgotten the numbers, but just for example, if the Director said, "Well, we've got sixty-four cases in court." "And how many lawyers do you have on your payroll?" And he said, "Sixty-four." He mentioned the same number. He . . .McKellar pounded the table. He said, "You mean to tell me you got a lawyer for every case?" He said, "Why, I'm a lawyer myself. If I couldn't handle that many cases by myself, I wouldn't tell anybody I'm a lawyer." So he took some more off of the poor fellow (Chuckle) instead of giving him what he was asking for. (Laughter) He was cutting everybody--the Wage and Hour Division, the Bureau of Labor
Standards--he was rampaging.

So before I went up, realizing that the old Senator was getting kind of old, I talked to his brother Don. Don practically ran the office for years, so I told Don what the circumstances were and I got to have this money back, so I said, "You tip off your brother." And he did. So when they got around to me, he said to the other people, "Well, we're through with you now. Goodbye. Now," he said, "next we have the Conciliation Service." So he went over in the corner and said, "Dr. Steelman, come here. I want to ask you something." I said, "What was it?" He said, "I've kind of forgotten. What . . . you want us to put some money back?" I said, "Yes, sir, Senator." He said, "How much?" And I said . . . And he said, "Okay." (Chuckle) So he went back and sat down at the table and he said, "Now gentlemen, it's getting mighty late here and I don't have any time left for discussion," but he said, "Dr. Steelman, just state briefly, what is it you want?" So I

[17]

told him. He said, "Anybody got any questions for Dr. Steelman?" Nobody said a word, and he said, "Granted. Goodbye." So out I went. (Laughter)

Frank Keefe, a Republican from Wisconsin, was on my appropriations committee. I think Frank's the one that tipped me off that (Pause) the old Congressman from Georgia was sore at me about an arbitration. So I had no trouble on the Hill. I was fair and open with them, I kept them informed as to what I was doing, and I convinced them that I wasn't trying to build up any great big organization. I just wanted the number of men that I had to have to handle the cases, and that's all the money I ever wanted, so whatever I asked for, I got. And twice, more than I asked for.

ROSS: What sorts of changes, innovations, did you want to see brought into the Service?

STEELMAN: Well, I . . . of course I wanted to up-grade the ability of the group gradually as more people of the right type and people with the right interest and knowledge and so forth became available. It was all so new in those days. The conciliators had to learn, the union leaders had to learn, the employer representatives that bargained--the whole business of collective bargaining was really an educational program back there. Now I'm sure they're all sophisticated enough that it's a matter of persuasion in another way, but my work was very largely educational and I tried to hammer that in to my own people, too.

For example, one of the first things I did after my training with Commissioner Richardson was . . I was sent out to West Virginia. There was a state-wide sawmill workers' strike: And two different conciliators had been out there and tried to settle it and had failed. And what they had done was to call a big meeting in Charleston, West Virginia, and they'd get them all in together and they'd all get in a big fight and they'd break up and go home. And I was sent out there, and I sized up the situation. I talked to one of the men who had been out there, and I said, "Well, I think I see what." I said, "They don't know what they're talking about; neither side. They've never bargained before. They don't even know what it's all about." So I said, "You know what I'm going to have to do? I'm going to have to go to every damn sawmill in West Virginia and talk to them individually and teach them how to bargain." And I did. It took me all summer.

[18]

I went all over the state, and I taught them what it's all about--democracy in industry. "If you're going to have democracy, you've got to have responsibility. You've got to be fair. You've got to be intelligent, know what you're talking about, this, that and the other, and sit down and treat each other like gentlemen. Don't be fighting all the time." And so it was just a pure educational job.

I went to one place where word had gotten out that some strike breakers were coming in, and back in the 30's the word "strike breaker" had a big significance, especially around the coal mines. And of course the miners' union was the strong one in West Virginia, and all the other unions that would get in trouble, they'd kind of depend on the miners for cooperation and advice and so forth. Well, a rumor got out at this particular mill that some strike breakers were coming in. And I think there was three or four million dollars worth of lumber there--hardwood, and they were threatening to burn it. It was a dangerous situation.

I got in to this place after midnight. I'll never forget it--it was .raining. I went down and I addressed the strikers from . . . I stood up on a high elevated railroad. At this particular spot the railroad was built way up, so I stood up on the railroad and the strikers were all down here--had a big fire going. And they had machine guns. They had a machine gun set up at each corner of this big lumber yard. I think the boys got away with those machine guns way back from World War One, I don't know where else they got them. I think that's where they got them. Anyhow, they had them. And if any strike breakers ever came in there, they'd get shot and the damned lumber would be burned up was the general idea.

So I stood up on the railroad track in the drizzling rain at three or four o'clock in the morning. It was midnight when I got in there, as I recall. And I addressed the multitude and . . . Oh, I had already talked to the manager and found out he didn't have any authority. The man I needed to see lived in another city. So I addressed the strikers and I said, "I find that I can't settle your strike here. The local manager admits"--and he permitted me to say this to them--"that he admits he doesn't have authority to settle with you. So I've got to go to such-and-such a city and see Mr. So-and-So." When I said that they all applauded. Then I said, "Gentlemen, I have heard rumors that--I'd heard that there is a rumor that some strike

[19]

breakers may come in here. Now," I said, "I want to tell you, I've been promised that that's not so." And I said, "I want to request two things of. you. First, if you see a strike breaker, shoot hell out of him." And you ought to have heard the applause. (Chuckle) The mountainside rang with applause. And I said, "You know, after all a strike breaker"--of course, they called them deputy sheriffs, that's what they called them--

ROSS: Hmmm .

STEELMAN: I said, "A deputy sheriff or a strike breaker or whatever you want to call him, he's just another guy like you and I except he's got a big gun latched on to his hip." And when I said "gun" every hand automatically went back to see if "mine is still there." They were all armed and I knew it. So I felt safe in telling them to shoot the guy because I'd been promised there was no such contemplation. (Laughter)

"Now," I said, "the other thing I want to ask you is to protect this lumber while I'm gone, because if something should happen here you won't get any wage increase, you won't even have jobs. The mill will be gone. So I want to ask you, on behalf of the government, I'm asking you to protect this lumber until I get back." And they said, "We will." So I felt pretty safe, except all the way in, when I left next day on the train to go see this guy in another city, all the way there I was wondering, it would be too bad if these guys did shoot somebody. (Laughter) They'd say I told them to. (Laughter) I just said it, feeling perfectly safe, and I wanted to get on the good side of these mad men, see? They were all very mad. Well, anyhow, they did protect the lumber and no strike breakers came in, so nobody got shot. (Laughter)

But it was . . . in those days it was just an educational job. They didn't know how to bargain. They didn't know anything about it. It was all new to both sides.

ROSS: Did you give your mediators, your conciliators, a sense of this mission as educational . . .

STEELMAN: Yes. Yes. Yes. Every time I'd see them, and in those early days we had . . . Having been out in the field myself, I realized how important it was for a conciliator to have contact with

[20]

his boss. Every so often I would have some reason for bringing them in to see me here, or if l could I'd go out and see them, but mostly they would come in here because I was so busy I couldn't get away. And it was always an up-lifting thing to get to come to headquarters and talk, and then that's when I would do my preaching to them as teaching.

ROSS: What about major disputes that you yourself were involved in? That were escalated into .

STEELMAN: Yes. Well . . .

ROSS: . . . your office?

STEELMAN: Not too many at first. Later on as the war came on, occasionally I would personally get involved. If the conciliator couldn't settle it out in the field, why, I'd send for all of them and the conciliator to come along with them, to come into Washington. And for a while I would--when they would come in, I would personally intervene and handle the situation. Later, I had to set up a kind of a screening process. I would call them in and I'd go in and say a few words, and I'd turn them over to . . . I had a committee here. I had a committee that I turned them over to--[Ross] Colwell and [Edward J.] Cunningham, Howard Colvin, and Carl Schedler.

In those early days we didn't have regional offices, so as the Conciliation Service grew during the war, I couldn't personally supervise all of them, so I had first, two or three--Cunningham and Colvin and then later Colwell and later [John] Daly. I had four or five men who kept in touch with the conciliators in different parts of the United States, and then from that, later on during the war, we actually set up regional offices out in the field.

ROSS: I see.

STEELMAN: But it evolved. First from me to this group and then on out. But this group, who kept in touch with the conciliators and the cases out in these districts, were the ones that I would turn them over to if I called them in to Washington. And they'd have a hassle with them for two or three days, you know.

As a last resort in those early days, I would personally come in and give them what we called the sweat box treatment. I would wear them down. If they were so

[21]

bullheaded, either side, that they wouldn't settle, I would call them in and--I had no authority to do it--but I said, "Gentlemen, consider this door locked. The first man that leaves this room, I will invite the press in and tell them, 'He's the guy that broke it up,' and I'll blast you right out of the water. So you sit right here till this is settled. I don't care how many hours--I can talk as long as you want to, but we're going to settle it right here and now."

I've had them going as much as thirty-six hours without even stopping. I wouldn't let them stop to eat, even. At last, after twenty-four to thirty-six hours I'd have a few benzedrine tablets in my desk and I'd take a little nip, a quarter of a grain first and later on a half. And the fellows would start going to sleep on me, and I'd pound the table and wake them up and say, "What's the matter with you guys? Don't you know this is serious business? Wake up here! What's the matter with you?" And I was as wide awake as if I'd just got up that morning, you know. (Laughter) So I'd finally wear them out and force them to settle.

I remember one exception to that. There was a union out in the West that got under Communist control and was during that little period where Hitler and Stalin were in cahoots. Of course, the boys got orders, "Don't settle," see? "Disrupt American industry." And I finally called them in here--they couldn't settle out there. And I called them in and it was a CIO union, so I got Allen Haywood from CIO headquarters here in town. He was an old miner and a Communist-hater if you ever saw one. And I said, "Allen, I'm going to give them the sweat box, and you'll have to stick with me now. I'm going to wear them down and force them to settle." So he said, "All right. I got no more use for that kind of stuff than you have, Doctor, so we'll wear them out."

So we came and we talked twenty-four hours and nothing happened, we talked thirty-six hours and nothing happened. And these guys had orders--they would have died before they settled, see? And one of the committee walked into my office the first day. He had a derby hat on. And he sat down around the table with his hat on, so I said--I pointed at him and I said, "Stand up!" And he stood up automatically and I said, "Take that hat off and hang it over there or I'll throw you out this third-story window!" And it turned out that his hat was steel lined. It was

[22]

really a helmet. He was in the habit of getting hit over the head on the picket lines, so he was protected, see, and he just tried to wear that hat all the time. (Laughter) So I made him pull his hat off. (Laughter)

Well, anyhow, Allen Haywood and I finally gave up on these boys, and we sent them back home. They had orders not to settle. So we sent them back home, and we had to get a couple of the leaders put in jail later and then we settled it. But it was tough right there for a little while, but if a union did get under Communist control a lot of unions were said to be under Communist control which weren't. If the manager didn't like them, he might call them Communist, but this particular union actually was under Communist control for a while, and the only way we could settle it was to get two or three of them sent to jail.

ROSS: Hmmm!

STEELMAN: They were tough. But most of the time if nothing else worked, the sweat box treatment did. They'd finally get so tired they were glad to get out, you know. (Chuckle)

ROSS: I think the present Director still uses . . .

STEELMAN: Does he? (Laughter)

ROSS:. . . variations of that

STEELMAN: He may . . . (Laughter)

ROSS:. . . technique. (Laughter)

STEELMAN: . . . He may still have to do that some time. (Laughter) But those early days . . . they were really the beginning of collective bargaining on a wide scale in the United States and the whole thing was educational. You just had to educate them.

ROSS: You've mentioned John L. Lewis in some of your previous remarks. I wonder if you . . . Have you in any of your other interviews gone into any detail in your relationship with Mr. Lewis?

STEELMAN: Hmmm. I'm not sure that I have.

[23]

ROSS: If you haven't I think it . . .

STEELMAN: No.

ROSS: . . . would be most interesting . . .

STEELMAN: Yes, well . . .

ROSS: . . . He certainly is a pivotal . . .

STEELMAN: Yes, Mr. Lewis . . .

ROSS: . . . character in American labor.

STEELMAN: One erroneous impression the public always had of John Lewis was that the coal operators hated him. That's far from the truth. The coal operators, for at least twenty-five years, depended on John Lewis for advice on how to run their business. They were in and out of his office here in Washington every day of the week, asking John Lewis for advice. So that the public picture--and Lewis himself is largely responsible for it. He wanted it that way. He wanted
the union people to think that he was forever fighting with these operators, you see. But the truth is they fought only every two years, but in between times they were always great friends.

ROSS: Hmmm.

STEELMAN: So that's one erroneous impression. Lewis was . . .sure, he was a tough negotiator, but the operators . . . Before he came in to power, there were hundreds of strikes daily throughout the United States on a local level. They'd get mad about something and walk out of the mines. And when Lewis came in, he brought order. He stopped the local strikes pretty much, almost a hundred per cent, and of course the operators appreciated that. So they had great respect for John Lewis.

I had been negotiating, say in New York, every two years. Every two years the contract would run out, and they'd go and negotiate for a month and then they'd threaten to strike. And the President would send me up, and I'd ask them on behalf of the President to continue negotiations for thirty days more, and they would. And they'd talk around until spring time. Well, about the first of April is the time to go fishing or to plant the garden or go visit the relatives, and the companies, in the meantime, had a lot of cleaning up of the machinery and cleaning up the mines to do, so they'd finally strike. It went on for years.

[24]

They'd strike and then we'd continue negotiating while the strike was on. And after a week or so Lewis would say . . . in the morning he'd say to the coal operators, "Have you fellows got your machinery all oiled up, and you got your mines all staked up, and have you sold all the dirty coal you had on hand?" They'd say, "No, John, not quite yet." So Lewis would say, "Well, I guess I'll have to sit here and look at you for another week then." So they'd start negotiating. (Laughter) So they . . . this went on for years.

But the operators told me when I first went in, they trusted me, and they said, "Now, Dr. Steelman, we fight with John Lewis but we respect him. He has great ability. And one thing remember: if he tells you something, if he says he'll do something, you don't have to have it in writing. He will do it."

One time many years later, after I'd been in the picture for a long time, the matter of changing the hours of work came up, and it went on and on and on. And finally Lewis said to me one day I think we'd seized the mines in the meantime, I think they were under government operation--Lewis said, "For God's sake, I guess we'd better get this settled. Tell the operators that I said, 'Agree to this change and I'll see that the production doesn't change.'" They said, "Did John tell you that?" I said, "He sure did." They said, "That's all we need to know. We don't even need it in writing. We'll agree." So they had great respect for John L.

As I started to say, John Lewis was one of the three people I ever met in my life who had a perfect photographic memory. One time after I had left the White House, some coal operators got me to go talk to John, because they knew he and I were friends, about shipping coal out of the southern ports to South America. They thought there was going to be a big industrial revolution in South America after the war. So I went over to see John and I told him these fellows wanted me to talk to him about this.

"Well," he said, "tell your friends they're on the wrong track. We aren't going to be sending coal to South America and," he said, "I'll tell you why. Ninety-eight per cent of all the wealth is controlled by two per cent and they're not about to change it." He said, "You can't have industry--you can't have industry in a country unless you divide up, unless you pay the workers enough money so they can buy back the stuff that they make." And he said, "They're not about to do that in South America. Not while I live, not while you live, not while any coal operator who hired you to come and see me lives. It will not happen in South America. They are not about to change."

[25]

And he said, "Look at their budgets." And he started with Mexico, and he went right down south and covered every country and he . . . it took him hours. He discussed the budget of every South American country, told what the budget is for this year, and where the money comes from, and what are they going to do with it. And I sat astounded. And when he finished I said, "John, I could find a fellow in the State Department who could tell me what you told me about Brazil. I'd have to go to another one to tell me about Chile, for example." And I said, "How do you know this stuff?" And he said, "Well, the coal operators expect me to know."

Now what had happened is, John gets ahold of these documents, and he just looks at them and he memorizes them. He takes a mental picture. He said, "Now," he said, "here's where the coal's going--not to South America. It's going to Europe. Europe is going to have a great industrial explosion. It's already started," he said, "and that's where we're going to ship coal. Not to South America." And he said, "Look at their budgets." So he tells me the budget of every European country. And he had just looked at them and took a picture. He and President Truman same type. They had photographic memories, and they're two of the three that I ever met in my life.

ROSS: Hmmm.

STEELMAN: Truman could have a press conference on the federal budget, and the boys would ask him a question, and he'd say, "That's answered on page 963, right down at the bottom. The figure says so and so." We never had anybody else who could do that. I don't suppose there ever
was another President who even knew the federal budget, much less knew it by . . . could just read it off. And Truman didn't understand why, if you ever read anything, you couldn't still
see it.

ROSS: Hmmm.

STEELMAN: One time Chief Justice [Fred M. ] Vinson . . . I'm getting off the subject a little here, but Lewis reminds me of it. Vinson visited with us down in Key West once and he quoted some Greek or Latin phrase, and Truman said, "Mr. Chief Justice, I beg your pardon. You're misquoting. That's not what the man said. He said so and so." The Chief Justice said, "What are you talking about, Mr. President? I've been using that quotation in speeches for thirty years." "Well," Truman said, "that's even worse. I thought you just made a mistake now. You've been mistaken for thirty years." (Laughter)

[26]

So he turned to one of his assistants and he said, "Go down to the boat,"--we had the President's boat down. We'd been to Puerto Rico--"Go down to the boat and look on the third shelf in the library, the third shelf and two feet to the right, and get this book and look on page 273, the second paragraph from the top on the right hand page, right in the middle of the paragraph there's this phrase the Justice is misquoting." He said, "On second thought, you'd better bring the book up here and let me show him. He'll think you're just taking up for me." So the fellow came up after while with the book, grinning. He said, "Here it is, Mr. President. You were right." And the Chief Justice said, "Damned if I'll ever argue with you again." (Laughter) A photographic memory is invaluable, you know. Lewis had one and so did Truman.

ROSS: Hmmm.

STEELMAN: Only . . . two of the only three I ever saw. Another was Professor [Earl) Hamilton that I studied with at Harvard and who later taught at Duke and then later at Northwestern. He had a photographic memory. All he had to do was just turn the pages and he had a picture. He
could read it right back to you word for word.

ROSS: Amazing.

STEELMAN: Absolutely amazing. So Lewis . . . we would be negotiating in New York, and Lewis . . . we'd adjourn at four-thirty. And I'd say, "Gentlemen, it's nearing the time for adjournment and this is your day to talk to the press. I talked to the press yesterday; today's your day, and you'd better be thinking about what you're going to say." So the spokesman for the coal operators would say, "John, you know I can't hold you a light, but I'll try. You lead off and
then I'll try to answer you." And Lewis would be walking around and around the table, chomping on his cigar, and say, "Well," he'd say, "Charles,"--Charlie O'Neill was the operators' man. He used to be secretary of one of the local unions, by the way, and later got to be spokesman for the whole coal business, on the other side. He said, "Charles, I think I'm going to blame this strike--I think I'm going to blame the strike on Wall Street. So," he said, "I'll take after you pretty strongly and then I'll really blame it . . . I'll say Wall Street's telling you what to do, so then you can answer that."

So sure enough, the press--they'd be laughing--the press would come in and Lewis would get that scowl on his face. He'd just been laughing five minutes before. And Lewis would say, "This . . ." He'd say, "The atmosphere of Wall Street is so thick

[27]

here in this room, you could cut it with a knife. These men, these puppets, sit here opposite me and say 'No, no, no,' day after day. They might as well stick up a placard saying 'No' and they could go home and just let us talk to the placard. Wall Street is back of this strike." So the headlines in all the New York papers would say "Lewis blames Wall Street." And when the press would leave, Lewis and O'Neill walked down the hall with their arms around each other, laughing. (Laughter)

So the public never knew the story, see? All we were doing was negotiating until union people got their gardens planted and visited the relatives and went fishing, and until the coal operators got the mines all cleaned up and the machinery oiled, and sold the dirty coal, and got ready to go again. And it went on and on. It repeated every two years (Chuckle) for a long time. But the public thought Lewis and the coal operators hated each other, and that was far from the truth. (Laughter)

ROSS: How about William Green, whom you mentioned as president of the AFL . . .

STEELMAN: Hmmm.

ROSS: He was a pivotal figure in American labor, although not very well perceived, I think.

STEELMAN: Mm-hmm. Well, he was here in the early days, you know, and was a fine person personally, not as able as Lewis, not as strong. But at that time the old-line unions--and that's all we had, primarily the building trades--they didn't particularly want a strong man as president. They didn't want the president telling them what to do anyway. Now later on [George] Meany came along at a period when they needed a strong man and when they got one. But in Bill Green's day he fit perfectly. He was just the kind of man they needed as president. Everybody liked him, you know, and he was a nice fellow, and so forth. And the unions ran their own affairs anyway. They didn't have Bill Green telling them what to do. And they were small in those days and they didn't do it, but later on the situation required a different kind of man and they got him. So Green was okay for the day in which he served.

ROSS: I see.

STEELMAN: He was fine.

ROSS: How about Phillip Murray, who was . . .

STEELMAN: Phil . . .

[28]

ROSS: . . . with the Steelworkers?

STEELMAN: . . . Phil was entirely different from Lewis, but a very able person--honest, sincere. (Pause) He and Lewis Phil Murray and John Lewis--together made . . . and they used to have a fellow named Van Bintner with them. Van was about the same type as Phil Murray. They, together, made the finest negotiating team you ever saw. Lewis would bluster, and they'd--the other two--come up with the facts. Murray always stuck to the facts, and you could always depend on what he told you. He knew what he was talking about and they . . . The steel people, for example. And that later was his union--of course Murray came out of the miners' union . . .

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: . . . but later the steel. They always respected Phil. In a lot of the big fights in the early days, the press .... You'd think they hated each other but they didn't. They never did. In fact, I don't . . . I never heard of anybody that didn't like Phil Murray. I never heard a manager say he didn't like Phil.

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: He might not agree with him, but he still liked him.

ROSS: At what point in development of unionization did the Autoworkers begin to be powerful on the national scene?

STEELMAN: Well, in the early thirties--what was it? Thirty-five, I guess. Was that when the sit-down strikes . . . that's the first you ever heard of them, you know. They'd organized and they had the sit down strikes-sit-in-strikes, they called them. They didn't know what collective bargaining was all about at the time and neither did the auto manufacturers. That, again . . . they had to go through a very extensive educational program on both sides. They became powerful back in the thirties. (Pause) I've forgotten who the first president was. The one I dealt with most, but I think he was the second national . . . international president. He might have been the first. He was R. J. Thomas.

ROSS: Hmmm.

STEELMAN: Thomas wasn't a particularly strong man, but he had under him as it . . . he headed the international union. Then they had a man in charge of General Motors, a man in charge of Ford and a man in charge of Chrysler, and Walter Reuther was the General Motors man. And
Walter was always strong, and yet he and Thomas got along. So

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they . . . back in the thirties, they went through some terrible experiences, primarily because neither side understood each other or trusted each other and they didn't know . . . (Chuckle) they were awfully rough back there for a while.

And of course in the early days old Henry--the old man, Henry Ford the First--he was the tough guy and he had this fellow [Harry) Bennett with him, a tough one. [William] Knudson of General Motors is one of the first who began to understand it from their side, and understand that we really got to educate the boys. And Knudson took great pride in saying, "I know how to deal with the boys." And he did. And later, to everybody's surprise at the time, [Charles E.] Charlie Wilson, who had had no experience in dealing with the unions he succeeded Knudson when we called him down to Washington during the war, or rather just before the war. Roosevelt called Knudson down here so he turned General Motors over to Charlie Wilson--Charlie got along with the fellows pretty good from the very beginning. And then of course when young Henry Ford took over, why, they got along fine. One of the finest men in the country today is Henry Ford. (Pause) But that union went through an educational process like the rest of them.

ROSS: Several of my respondents have mentioned that unions and management and industries in situations seem to have to go through a maturing process . . .

STEELMAN: That's exactly what it was. That's just it.

ROSS: . . . and that in these days we're now seeing the public employees, who don't really know very well how to..

STEELMAN: Yes. Yes.

ROSS: . . . bargain and. . . .

STEELMAN: That's right. That's right.

ROSS: . . . people in entertainment, baseball players, football players and so forth. (Laughter) And that it may be a maturing process.

STEELMAN: That's right. That's right.

ROSS: Well, back to your own experience. Could you tell me about the situation of the Conciliation Service vis-á-vis the War Labor Board? I think you touched on it briefly but . . .

STEELMAN: Yes.

[30]

ROSS: . . . how did this situation affect the operation of the Service and the morale of the conciliators and so forth?

STEELMAN: Well, I realized the necessity to have the War Labor Board, and yet it bothered me in that I had learned that as long . . . any time there's somewhere else to go, then it's harder to settle down here. So I knew that a great many of our cases were going to go through our hands and on in to the War Labor Board, but I knew it had to be. So I was in favor of the War Labor Board, and I got my top assistant, Carl Schedler, to go over and be the secretary or manager or the staff manager for the War Labor Board, Carl and I being very close. So we just felt that that was the way to do it and the Board members--they realized the problem, too. So they figured that if I could say to my men, "Well, Carl's over there. He wouldn't be doing anything to hurt us, you know." And so it was . . . the Board and I agreed that we ought to have Schedler be their man.

ROSS: Hmmm .

STEELMAN: So we had a good close working relationship all through the war and the only thing, it hurt us in that the boys would have a tendency to say, "Well, let's don't try to settle it here, let's just take it to the War Labor Board," you know. So it affected our ability to settle lots
of the strikes, but, as I say, it's one of these things we had to have.

ROSS: Yes.

STEELMAN: We had something similar even way back in World War I, you know. Former President [William Howard] Taft was head of the war Labor Board during World War I. And
so during the war you got to have somewhere to go. If you can't settle it here, you got to have somewhere, because they can't strike, see?

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: So if you're going to say, "You can't strike," then you got to give them somewhere else to go. The War Labor Board was, in a sense; a court. In other words, when they got there, they were pretty well told what to do, because the Board represented . . . had labor men and industry men there, and when they came in and said, "You fellows, we recommend you do this," they sort of had to do it. It was kind of like a court without saying so.

[31]

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: So it was a higher, step to take.

ROSS: More like binding arbitration . . .

STEELMAN: That's right. That's right.

ROSS: . . . voluntary . . .

STEELMAN: Yes. Yes.

ROSS: . . . arbitration.

STEELMAN: That's just about the way it works. So we had to have it.

ROSS: Mm-hmm .

STEELMAN: But it crippled our effectiveness for a time to a certain degree, but it's just one of those things we had to have.

ROSS: One of the situations that one perceives as one is looking through all this labor history and so forth is, first of all, that the elite in labor relations ever since seems to have come substantially from the War Labor Board group.

STEELMAN: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

ROSS: Almost everybody who . . . well, they're beginning now to be retirement age but . . .

STEELMAN: Yes. Yes.

ROSS: . . . ever since . . .

STEELMAN: Yes. The War Labor Board staff was, on the whole, younger than my staff . . .

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN . . . although the newer ones that I brought in were younger, but the ones I inherited were older people.

ROSS: Yes.

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STEELMAN: So the War Labor Board . . . and they were . . .it was their first experience in the field, and here they were with these years of experience, and it was just natural that after the war, that's what they turned to.

ROSS: Yes.

STEELMAN: It's like David Stowe. Dave Stowe, who's now head of the National Mediation Board--Dave was my assistant at the White House. I knew him because he was with the Budget, and he used to handle my budget when I was here And when I went to the White House, the first thing I knew, I needed some help with something, so I took Dave away from the Budget Bureau and I had him come in as my assistant in the White House. Well, Dave, working with me at the White House, and during those days if [Cyrus S.] Cy Ching couldn't settle a strike, why the law says if it can't be settled, if it's a national affair, why it's got to go to the President, which it meant come to me, not the President. So Cy would bring the case over and dump it on my lap, and Dave would help me with it, and finally Dave got good enough that I could kind of turn it over to him and say, "Dave, find out what this is all about and then we'll move in." So when we left the White House, Dave became an arbitrator. He'd had his experience just like the boys on the War Labor Board had. That's . . . it's just natural that he'd turn to it. And it's a fascinating thing to many people. Some folks don't like it all, you know, but those who worked at the War Labor Board--at least those who stayed--they liked it.

ROSS: Hmmm.

STEELMAN: And it's a fascinating field, and so it was about the only place in the country where anybody had had enough experience, you see. We were just beginning to get industry people who'd had much experience in collective bargaining, and except for the few older unions, nobody had evolved. So that was a reservoir there, and so .they all got in it, mostly as arbitrators. And some of them got jobs, I guess. Well, under . . . who was it? Under [Edgar] Warren, I guess,
quite a few were hired here, too, I remember.

ROSS: Yes.

STEELMAN: A number got into the Conciliation Service.

ROSS: This was one of the things I wanted . . .

STEELMAN: Yes.

[33]

ROSS: . . to ask you about, because apparently that caused a great deal of ill feeling.

STEELMAN: Yes. Yes. You see, down the line--not at the top down the line, there was a little feeling all through the war, and you can see why. My man out in the field felt frustrated because they kept talking about going to the War Labor Board.

ROSS: Mm-hmm .

STEELMAN: In other words, they didn't want to deal with him, they wanted to get up higher. And so when the war was over and some of these same fellows began to come in to the Service, why, they resented it. That was under Ed Warren, I guess . . .

ROSS: Yes. Yes.

STEELMAN: . . . the first one. So yes, there was some feeling about that. With some exceptions I wouldn't have hired some of those fellows anyway, because they'd had a little different experience from what I wanted.

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: Some of them made good men--good conciliators, but some of them probably wouldn't have fit, and I wouldn't have hired some of them as conciliators. They'd been a little more like over on a court, you see . . .

ROSS: Mm-hmm .

STEELMAN: . . . and I think that's another thing that our fellows . . . our fellows figured that they weren't really mediators, so what are they doing coming in here, you know?

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: And they got mad at Warren for hiring them, and Warren, poor fellow, wasn't very popular anyway. And Frank Keefe finally ran him out of town.

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: Frank told me he wasn't going to stand for that, for a fellow like Warren. He had a very bad opinion of Warren. Warren really was a pretty good fellow, but he hadn't been careful enough about his associates

[34]

back in those early days. And Frank Keefe . . . Frank didn't think anybody could take my place anyhow, and Frank wasn't about to countenance a fellow like Ed Warren taking John Steelman's place. So he told me he was going to hound him out of town, and he finally did. I am sure he had more to do with it than anybody else.

ROSS: Yes. This . . . it appears, from the Congressional hearings . . .

STEELMAN: Yes. That's right.

ROSS: . . . that . . .

STEELMAN: And . . . (Pause) there's where Cy Ching came into the picture. (Pause) Truman says to me, "John, why don't they like this fellow that took your old job? What's the matter with this fellow, Warren?" And I told him what the whole picture was. And he said, "Who can we get to take his place?" And I said, "Well, Mr. President, the Service is in such a state. It's all . . . the conciliators don't like Warren, and industry doesn't like Warren, and I don't even think the labor unions like him, and the Congress particularly doesn't." And I said, "We'd better get a
man of real stature." "Well," Truman said, "Who can it be?"

Well, I knew Ching for years. I knew him in connection with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and I knew him as head of industrial relations for the U.S. Rubber Company. And I also knew that Cy was almost ready to retire. So I said to the President, "I suggest an industry man, but one that I guarantee you the labor boys like. He's spoken out time and again. He used to tell the Chamber of Commerce in the early days, when it didn't set so well, 'Gentlemen, you get exactly the kind of labor leader you deserve. If you ask, if you constantly fight, that's the kind of labor leader you're going to have, so it's up to you as to what kind of labor leaders you have working for or against you.' And he used to lay it on the line way back in the early thirties." So I said, "We ought to get Cy Ching."

Well, Truman said, "You reckon we could get him?" I said, "Well, it's no trouble finding out." So I . . . He said, "You get him." So I called up Cy, and I find he's up in, I think, New Brunswick. He's way up in Canada somewhere fishing. (Chuckle) So I called him up, and he's gotten after me many times about it. He said, "John, you shouldn't have interfered with my fishing trip." (Laughter) I got Cy, and of course it created great excitement up in the fishing village that the White

[35]

House was calling Mr. Ching. So I said, "Cy, the President wants to see you. When could you come down?" "Well, I could come down in two or three days. Is it urgent?" I said, "No. Just come when you can."

So he came down and we put the bee on Cy to retire early and take on this job. And Cy agreed to take it for one year, which was all we wanted, really. We wanted to get it back on a high level. And Cy took it and he liked it so well he stayed--how many, I've forgotten now--he stayed several, several years.

ROSS: Yes. Yes.

STEELMAN: So he was succeeded by--who, [David] Cole.

ROSS: Cole. Right.

STEELMAN: Cole.

ROSS: I understand you had a hand in that, too.

STEELMAN: That's right. That's right. Dave Cole. A couple of Republicans, by the way.

ROSS: Republicans. Right.

STEELMAN: Truman never cared. Incidentally, this has never been written up and doesn't have anything to do with your history, but someday in the Year 2000 when somebody looks at the tapes here, reads . . . he listens to the tapes, it would be interesting historically. I told President Roosevelt one time when we were talking about me being a member of the Cabinet, I said, "I was born and raised a Republican." I said, "My father's the only Republican I ever saw when I was young." He was from Arkansas and (Pause) the east Tennessee people never broke away from the Union during the Civil War.

ROSS: That's right.

STEELMAN: And some of. my relatives came from there, and so my father, not knowing why--particularly he didn't know the difference, probably--but he was a Republican, and the only one I ever saw in Arkansas at that time. There's lots of them now, but when I grew up he was the only one I knew. So my father and I suppose my uncles were Republicans. Yes, my uncles were, so I'd seen two or three Republicans. Well . . . and I told Truman the same thing. And they both said, "I don't care what your politics is. I handle the politics around here. You just . . . I just want you to help me to run

[36]

the government. You just do your job." When Truman asked me to come with him, I said, "Mr. President, I hesitate to come in the White House." He was apologizing for the fact that I was giving up my New York job where I was making $75,000 a year and expenses. And he said, "You know the government won't allow me to pay you a fraction of that, but I still need you terribly to help me out for six months." I said, "Mr. President, the salary doesn't worry me a bit." But I said, "One thing does. I'm afraid it'll be considered a political appointment." And I said, "You know, I was born and raised a Republican." Truman said, "I didn't know that, but I don't care." He said, "I just want you to help me run the government. I'll handle the politics around here." He said, "I happen to know that you have a great friend on the Hill who's also a friend of mine, and that's [Robert A.] Bob Taft." He said, "I came from the Hill. I know you've got as many Republican friends as Democratic, but I didn't know which . . . what you were and don't care." So that's interesting that both Roosevelt and Truman--they didn't care what my politics was. And Truman appointed many Republicans to office, and he always had one or two at least in the Cabinet. And two Directors of the U.S. Conciliation Service, my successors, . . .

ROSS: Right.

STEELMAN: . he appointed at my suggestion, but they were both Republicans. They just happened to be--we didn't care.

ROSS: Right. I'll bet he didn't have an enemies list either.

STEELMAN: No, he didn't. (Laughter) No, he didn't have an enemies list. (Laughter)

ROSS: Bringing up your job in New York, I have a question about . . .

STEELMAN: Mm-hmm.

ROSS: . . . your decision to leave the Conciliation Service . . .

STEELMAN: Oh, yes.,

ROSS: . . . in 1944.

STEELMAN: Well, I had . . . I had contemplated leaving somewhere along the line. I'd been in a long while, and I'd been in the government for ten years instead of the one that I'd come to be. And so I wanted to leave and get out on my own. I intended to be an industrial consultant an advisor to both unions and industry, but outside of the government. I thought the time had come when maybe I could do some good out there. And I had built a national reputation in

[37]

the meantime, so I tried to resign in July of '44 and . . . let's see. Yes, the election . . . the election was in November of ' 44

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: . . . wasn't it?

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: I tried to resign and Roosevelt said . . . he didn't want me to go. He was going to run again, and he didn't want . . . he'd have a lot of applicants . . . I'd made a national thing out of it, and that he'd have forty applicants and all of them would have forty people recommending them and he'd have to make all of them except one of the forty mad. So he said, "You stay till the day after the election. If you still want to go, I'll accept your resignation." So I said, "Okay." And that was the best kept secret in Washington. Only Roosevelt and Miss Perkins and Lois Lacey, my personal secretary, and I ever knew that that letter was written. Even Pearl [Smith] didn't know it--Pearl was secretary to Mr. Colvin at the time--and I didn't want my staff to know it . . .

ROSS: Right.

STEELMAN: . . . until I knew whether I was going or not. So from July until after the election nobody knew. And so I went to New York in November well, I didn't actually go there until, I guess, early in the following year. The first thing I .did, I went out to Chicago on a big arbitration case. The unions and the management people got together and came to Washington to see me, and I think they gave me $5000 a day to come out and work with them and help them settle a big multi-million dollar wage dispute, . . .

ROSS: Hmmm.

STEELMAN: . . . which I went out and proceeded to settle, not by arbitration, but by conciliation. I made them agree--I didn't tell them what to do, I made them agree--to a figure. But anyway, I worked for them a while and then I went to New York and set up my own office. And I had a group of companies that I advised, and most of them never bothered me. I've always said the wrong people hired me-the people who weren't going to have any trouble in the first
place. (Laughter) The people who really needed my advice didn't hire me.

ROSS: Maybe that's why they had the trouble.(Laughter)

[38]

STEELMAN: That's right. So I was in New York about nine months, and then in the meantime Truman became President and sent for me and he persuaded me to work for him for six months. And that lasted six months after [Dwight D.] Ike [Eisenhower] was elected. So the six months between Truman and me finally became a joke. About once a year, I'd say, "By the way, Mr. President, is my six months about up? (Laughter) It seems to me like it's been quite a while." He'd say, "Nope. It's not up yet. You've got to do so and so first." And so finally it became a big joke between us. (Laughter) And then, as I say, it ended up about six months after Ike was elected. I finally got out of the White House. (Laughter) I was there eight years.

ROSS: Well, upon your departure from the Conciliation Service then--I believe Mr. Colvin was Acting Director . . .

STEELMAN: Yes.

ROSS: . . . for a period of time.

STEELMAN: That's right. That's right.

ROSS: Did you have any . . . I suspect from what you have said earlier that you did not have any input on Mr. Warren's [appointment] . . .

STEELMAN: I was very busy getting my own affairs straightened out and I just wasn't in touch. And I think I was surprised when Warren was appointed, and I don't know that I ever knew who appointed him or why.

ROSS: Hmmm. The story that I heard is that he was in the Department one day and, I believe, told Mr. [Lewis] Schwellenbach--I believe Mrs. Perkins did not want to hire your successor because she knew she was leaving. She wanted . . .

STEELMAN: Yes. Yes.

ROSS: . . . her successor . . .

STEELMAN: Uh-huh.

ROSS: . . . and Mr. Warren walked in and said to the effect, "Hey, I'd like to be head of the Conciliation Service."

[39]

Well, . . . and I've always suspected that he's the one that put Truman up to calling me down here, although Truman never admitted it, and nobody did. Truman said it was his own idea. I said, "Mr. President, how'd you know," I said, "I didn't know you even knew me. How came you to call for me?" And I thought maybe he'd say Schwellenbach recommended me, but he didn't. He said, "Well, I had my eye on you all during the war." He said, "Do you remember that little committee I headed called the Truman Committee?" He said, "I was looking down your . . . I was looking right down your collar all during the war." He said, "If it hadn't been for you and your boys, we'd have lost the war. You kept them at work." He said, "You bet I knew all about you." And he said, "All the Senators and Congressmen on the Hill know all about you," he said. He said, "That's why I called for you. I know you can deliver." And he said, "The war's over and everybody's leaving town, and I need help." He said, (Laughter) "Come and help me for at least six months." So I said, "Okay." (Laughter)

ROSS: The bottomless six months.

STEELMAN: But I never knew and I . . . Schwellenbach . . . that's probably about the way that did happen. I don't know.

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: I just don't know. I don't believe any of the labor leaders would have recommended Warren. At least, he shouldn't have got many of them, because I don't think he was popular with them.

ROSS: Hmmm.

STEELMAN: As I say, he was a good fellow, but he just wasn't the one for that job.

[40]

ROSS: How can you account for his . . . you've pointed out that he wasn't very well thought of by labor or management . . .

STEELMAN: Yes.

ROSS: . . . or conciliators and so forth. How can you account for this? Although everybody says he was a nice enough fellow.

STEELMAN: That's it. A nice guy . . .

ROSS: What was wrong with him?

STEELMAN: . . . but people . . . they just didn't like him. I don't know. Well, the conciliators--you can see why they didn't. He was from the War Labor Board, see?

ROSS: Yes.

STEELMAN: They didn't like him, and they didn't like the people he hired, and they didn't like the way he (Pause). . . supervised them. In those days I was still very close to a lot of conciliators. I still am close to some of them. But in those days they all told me about their troubles, you know, when I'd see them, and they just didn't like Warren at all. They didn't like anything he did.

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: I remember visiting in a distant city with a conciliator one day, and he pointed to a stack of papers about a foot high. He said, "Look at that stack of papers!" He said, "That's what I've gotten in the last two months from the head office. Memos telling me what to do." And he said, "I haven't read 'em and I ain't about to read 'em. I don't give a damn what Ed Warren says. I
know how to settle strikes in this town. You sent me here years' ago and told me to handle it, and. I'm still doing it." (Laughter) And he said, "I'm going to do it my way until they fire me."He said, "I don't even read Warren's memos." (Laughter) So he just didn't get along with the boys, for some reason.

ROSS: Yes.

STEELMAN: Too bad, really.

[41]

ROSS: Some people think that Mr. Warren felt that he had a mandate from the Labor-management conference that President Truman called in 1945 . . .

STEELMAN: Mm-hmm.

ROSS: . . . to expand and strengthen the Service . . .

STEELMAN: Uh-huh.

ROSS: . . . and they speculate that maybe Mr. Warren felt that he had this mandate from labor and management .

STEELMAN: I see. Well . . .

ROSS: . . . to expand and strengthen, which apparently to him, meant bringing in a whole bunch of new people . . .

STEELMAN: New people and . . .

ROSS: . . . which says to the old people, "You're no darned good."

STEELMAN: "You're no good." That's right. That's right. Bringing in new people, and the only new ones he knew to get was his War Labor Board boys, see? That's about what happened. I was, again, too busy to know anything about a particular conference. I talked to George Taylor some about it later, but they drew up a lot of well meaning phrases and so forth, and then Warren could have gotten the wrong impression.

ROSS: Yes.

STEELMAN: The only trouble is Warren ought to know that what people say in a conference like that and what they really want done might be different. He should have gone and talked to them.

ROSS: Well, this was exactly . . .

STEELMAN: That's it. He should say, "Hey, did you mean this and if so is this what it means?" See?

ROSS: Yes. Yes.

STEELMAN: He didn't do that. So he proceeded to try to expand and . . .

[42]

ROSS: And I understand he got into budgetary difficulties as well.

STEELMAN: Well, right away on the Hill, yes. Frank Keefe never intended to let him get by. They were mad on the Hill that he was appointed.

ROSS: I see.

STEELMAN: And not only that he was a War Labor Board man, which they knew was going to hurt my boys. In other words, they'd been over us, theoretically, see

ROSS: Yes.

STEELMAN: . . . and to have him come in, they knew it wasn't going to work. And old Frank Keefe, he just called a spade a spade, you know. And he told me, "I'm going to run him out of town."

ROSS: And he did.

STEELMAN: He did. He did.

ROSS: Then all this, of course, sets the stage for the Taft-Hartley Law . . .

STEELMAN: That's right.

ROSS: . . . that finally . . .

STEELMAN: That's right.

ROSS: . . . separated the Service.

STEELMAN: That's right. That's where . . .

ROSS: What all was really going on?

STEELMAN: If . . . if . . .

ROSS: You know, why was it really . . .

STEELMAN: If I had still been here, somewhere down the line I might personally have recommended it, but at the time, as I told you earlier, I saw that it didn't happen. And I'm not sure that it was quite ready to

[43]

happen even then. Cy Ching, for example--if Cy had come in, it didn't matter whether he was an independent agency or not, he was just Cy Ching. Just like I was John Steelman. It didn't really matter. But it's all right now. Everybody's grown up, of course. It's all right for it to be an independent agency

ROSS: Yes.

STEELMAN: . . . because you might have, if you got . . . you might have a Secretary of Labor and a head of the Service that didn't get along, see? As far as I know they always have, but I think under some administrations since, the Secretary of Labor has had much more to say than anybody ever said to me. I don't think . . . I don't think the Service has ever been as independent, certainly no more so--it could be any more than I was. And I . . . and under most Secretaries of Labor, under most Cabinet officers, they . . .I think wasn't it Ike? I think Ike had the Director
report through the Secretary of Labor even though he's head of an independent agency.

ROSS: Yes.

STEELMAN: I didn't report through anybody. So I don't know how it is now under this administration. Under the Nixon administration I suppose the only contact the head of the Service had was with the Secretary of Labor. He probably didn't have any with Nixon.

ROSS: Primarily, certainly.

STEELMAN: Yes. Nixon was . . .

ROSS: It was Mr. [George] Shultz who . . .

STEELMAN: Yes.

ROSS: . . . did all . . . all the labor advising . . .

STEELMAN: That's right.

ROSS: . . . even after he had gone to the Treasury . . .

STEELMAN: Sure. That's right.

ROSS:. . . and Budget.

[44]

STEELMAN: That's right. So Nixon wouldn't have known what he was talking about anyway. Nixon didn't know anything about labor relations. So Shultz luckily did. Shultz was good But here he was Secretary of Labor and he was, in a sense, over the Director, although the Director, by law, is independent.

ROSS Yes.

STEELMAN: Whereas in my case, I wasn't independent by law, I was independent by fact, (Laughter) absolute fact. (Laughter) So it depends on who it is, although I do think the time now is . . it's all right for it to be independent. I think it's all right. In fact, they're going to get their own building. That'll be . . . that'll be good.

ROSS: Yes. Yes. I think it's still confused in a lot of people’s minds, the fact that it is in this building.

STEELMAN: That's it. As long as it's in this building, they'll still think it.

ROSS: Right. Right.

STEELMAN: Yes. Yes. So I . . . it's a good thing now. But in my day we weren't ready.
ROSS: Yes. Well, you must have watched the maneuvering. Actually the Taft-Hartley Law, as I read the Committee hearings and so forth . . .

STEELMAN: Yes.

ROSS: . . . it was really a .compromise

STEELMAN: Yes. Yes.

ROSS: . . . of many, many different . . .

STEELMAN: Oh, I guess, all extremes from one end to the other.

ROSS: Yes.

STEELMAN: Yes. Yes.

ROSS: Why was the . . . and I've listed on our little sheet here several of the factors that in my speculations might have prompted the separation of the Service. You have pointed out that it seemed to you that you were always neutral. . .

[45]

STEELMAN: Yes.

ROSS: . . . that you were never pro-labor . . .

STEELMAN: That's right. Didn't.

ROSS: . . . despite the make up of the Service . . .

STEELMAN: That's right.

ROSS: . . . or the fact that it was part of the Department of Labor.

STEELMAN: My budget still went in through the Department of Labor, you know . . .

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: . . . and that was all right. And I'm sure a lot of the labor people considered that we were part of their department of the government.

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: It was all right. In fact, I used to use it on occasion. (Laughter) But . . . the . . . except for going through the budget, that's the only contact I ever had with the Secretary of Labor. I didn't see her very often.

I'm sure that one of the factors, probably the biggest one at the time--one of the factors, if not the greatest factor in making it possible to take the U.S. Conciliation Service out of the Labor Department, take it from under the Secretary of Labor and make it independent--was the dislike of Warren. A number of people in the Congress had always thought it ought to be independent. From time to time I would have to tell them, "Not yet. Leave it alone. I can work better where I am because I'm in an educational process. Some day, but not now."

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: And as I say, I could even get the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to help me on the Hill, if necessary, to kill it off.

[46]

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: In the early days the agitation to make it independent was . . . Most of the people on the Hill that would bring that subject up wanted to hurt Secretary Perkins. They would be mad at her about something and they'd want to take something away from her.

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: It wasn't that they thought the time had come when collective bargaining was an institution and so forth and so on. They weren't that concerned. They just wanted to take something away from the Labor Department. They took the Immigration Service away from the Secretary of Labor. They took this, that and the other away from the Secretary, and they wanted to take me away from her, see?

ROSS: Mm-hmm .

STEELMAN: Well, I was already away from her, which they didn't understand. (Laughter) So that's one of the factors, and the dislike of Warren is another. And I'm not sure but that maybe a number of people who did understand the situation better honestly thought that the time had come when it was the thing to do.

ROSS: Mm-hmm .

STEELMAN: I wasn't sure that the time was quite right yet, but I didn't care one way or another. I thought we were close enough to it that it didn't really hurt.

ROSS: Mm-hmm..

STEELMAN: I personally might have wanted to wait a few more years. But the time was right. I think for those two reasons.

ROSS: Yes.

STEELMAN: They . . . Of course, Secretary Perkins was gone in the meantime, but they still . . . some people didn't like the Labor Department anyhow, just liked to take something away from them.

ROSS: Yes.

[47]

STEELMAN: And then they didn't like Warren, so that's all the more reason to take it away.

ROSS: Who were these people? You mentioned people who were agitating back during your tenure to make it independent.

STEELMAN: Well, I don't remember.

ROSS: Who were some of these?

STEELMAN: I think Senator Copeland was one, from New York. He kept bringing the matter up. And Copeland finally succeeded once in getting part of what he wanted. He couldn't get the Conciliation Service taken out of the Labor Department. And he thought we were pro labor or
something of the sort, and so he couldn't get that done. And he finally got . . . he got a . . . we kept having maritime strikes. And Copeland took the lead and got a law passed to set up the Maritime Labor Board . . .

ROSS: Hmmm.

STEELMAN: . . . headed by Dr. [ Robert W. ] Bruere, a man who used to work for me. He was a friend of Secretary Perkins. He got . . . he came to me through the old Textile War Board . . . the Textile Board before the war. It was a New Deal agency. And I inherited the Textile Labor Relations Board and fired most of them and kept some good ones, because the time had come when I didn't need all of them. But Bruere was the chairman and [Joseph] Joe Ryan, head of the Longshoremen's Association, and I blew that board out of the water. Killed it. I didn't want it because it would split us up and it wasn't the right time. We couldn't have a board for every different industry. The whole country would be crazy, the first thing you know, and I didn't
want that kind of thing to get started. So they set up this board, and nobody took cases to them for a while. And one time, (Laughter) Joe Ryan, head of the Longshoremen's Association, came down to see Roosevelt. They were good friends. And Joe went out in the lobby and the press said, "Mr. Ryan, what did you talk to the President about?" "Well," he said, "I talked to him about a number of things." And he said, "One thing I told the President was that we are never going to take any cases to this new Maritime Labor Board, that. Dr. Steelman handles all our disputes and he's going to keep on handling them:" And the poor Board was just blown right out of the water. (Chuckle) They never . . . they never got off the . . . never

[48]

got off the ground. They had to go out of business. They went right out of business. But Copeland was forever agitating for something, and I . . . as I recall it, he's one of those, and I've forgotten who else. But every once in a while the subject would come up. But in those early days it was primarily brought up by people who wanted to take something away from the Labor Department.

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: They were trying to hurt the Labor Department. They weren't trying to have better labor relations.

ROSS: Right. And as you point out, they took . . . they did deplete . . .

STEELMAN: Sure. As far as they could go.

ROSS: . . . the Children's Bureau . . .

STEELMAN: That's right. Yeah. Everything they could do, you know.

ROSS: Yes.

STEELMAN: So . . . but that's it. They weren't discussing whether the time is ripe for a separate agency.

ROSS: Right.

STEELMAN: They were just going to do something to the Secretary of Labor or to the Department of Labor.

ROSS: So then would you say it was a partisan sort of thing? Were these Republicans who wanted to do in the Labor Department or . . .

STEELMAN: No, not necessarily.

ROSS; . . . was it bi-partisan?

STEELMAN: Yes, I think so. I think, as I recall it; no, it wasn't a party thing. It was just different individuals . . .

ROSS: Yes.

[49]

STEELMAN: . . . that liked to do something to the Labor Department or do something to the Secretary of Labor, or, if they were dissatisfied the way things were going, they thought it would be better if we had some other kind of agency. And as I told them over and over, "Laws can't settle it. Agencies can't settle it. You've got to settle it. Sit right here and understand each other. Nobody else can settle it but you. And you just sit here, and my job is to see that you don't leave. (Laughter) You just stay right here until you get it settled." (Laughter)

ROSS: "You're in the sweat box."

STEELMAN: That's right. (Laughter) I think it worked out well as an independent agency. I think it's coming along now and the time's right. And as I say, I'm glad they're getting their own building, because that'll complete the transition.

ROSS: Yes. Yes. I think . . . it seems to me, observing the different relationships through the years, that it is always a factor of the relationship of. The Director of the Service to the Secretary of Labor, the relationship of the Service to the White House, and it's very fluid . . .

STEELMAN: That's right.

ROSS: . . . depending on personality . . .

STEELMAN: Mm-hmm. Depending on who it is.

ROSS: . . . and so forth.

STEELMAN: That's right.

ROSS: And may be in for a little change with the new Secretary of Labor [John Dunlop] coming in.

STEELMAN: Might be. Might be.

ROSS: A slight change one way or the other.

STEELMAN: The man coming in has had a lot of experience and is well known by both sides. I think it's going to be a great change . . .

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

[50]

STEELMAN: . . . a change for the better. The present Secretary hasn't had too good an opportunity because (Laughter) he and Meany couldn't get along, strange to say. (Laughter). That's another very important thing to anybody in this country who thinks that labor leaders are prejudiced in favor of each other and as against outsiders. That wasn't true back in my days. As I told you about Harry Scheck, the president of the labor council in Chicago, and the businessmen said, "Don't transfer Harry. He's fair and he can handle the boys better than anybody else, you see. If they're wrong he will tell them. If we're wrong, he tells us. And we listen." Now look here. Here's Meany. You'd think Meany--my God, would favor the Secretary of Labor as his own man. Not only a labor leader but the Building Trades that Mr. Meany came from. That doesn't necessarily mean that he and Meany get along. Meany comes along here and wants John Dunlop, a Harvard professor, (Laughter) because he knows him and likes him and trusts him, see? So people who think this is a one-sided affair .... And as I say, the same thing applies to industry. If you think a man out of industry is going to be prejudiced in favor of industry, not necessarily. I told you I had to fire a guy from industry because he wasn't fair to his own people. He leaned over too far the other way. So it's a matter of personalities. It's not a matter of what group you came from.

People down in Florida ask me, "Why does Meany go for a fellow like John Dunlop?" I said, "Because Meany knows him and likes him and understands him, and he knows John understands his problems." They say, "Well, it's strange he'd go for him instead of a labor leader." I said, "It isn't strange at all. Meany is a very practical guy. He wants the best fellow in the job." (Laughter) Incidentally, Meany has great respect today among business people from all walks of life. Retired industrialists tell me every day, "Say, that fellow Meany is a smart guy, isn't he?" And I say, "Yeah, he's pretty smart." (Laughter) But it's individuals--it isn't what group he came from. And that's the reason it was maybe unfair for the boys to be a little prejudiced against War Labor Board boys, you see. They weren't . . . they weren't all . . . they weren't the same at all. Some of them might have been very good.

ROSS: Well, actually Mr. Ching and Mr. Cole both served on the War Labor Board,. didn't they?

[51]

STEELMAN: Why, sure. Sure.

ROSS: And were perfectly acceptable.

STEELMAN: That's right.

ROSS: Mr. Simkin was associated . . .

STEELMAN: That's right.

ROSS: . . . with the War Labor Board.

STEELMAN: That's right. Sure he was.

ROSS: He was very much admired in the Service.

STEELMAN: George Taylor. All the boys liked George . . .

ROSS: Sure.

STEELMAN: . . . as long as he lived. So again, it's individuals, you see.

ROSS: Yes. Yes.

STEELMAN: Primarily, it goes back to the fact they didn't like Ed Warren, and I never knew why. Really, I never knew completely why they didn't. I know why Keefe didn't like him; Keefe thought he was a Communist

ROSS: Mm-hmm .

STEELMAN: . . . which I don't think he was. I didn't know him well enough to know, but I don't think he was.

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: He was, as I said, a little careless about who he associated with at times, back when you had to be careful if you were going to be in public life . . .

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: . . . and be respected. (Pause) But outside of that . . . and as I say, they didn't like the . . .the staff didn't like the way Ed tried to run the department. But . . . Keefe just said, "Well,

[52]

he can't take John Steelman's place." So he was just against him on general principles anyway, you know. (Laughter) So poor Ed never had a chance. (Laughter) Now I had a better chance. Although I was new, I was a college professor. All the conciliators recommended that I succeed Mr. Kerwin.

ROSS: Hmmm.

STEELMAN: They came to Mr. Kerwin's funeral, I learned later. They came to Mr. Kerwin's funeral and they got together and they as a group sent a message to Miss Perkins that "We think Dr. Steelman . . ." She had appointed me Acting . . .

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: . . . and before I was actually nominated they all wanted me.

ROSS: Hmmm.

STEELMAN: Because I'd been out . . . I'd settled strikes In thirty-eight states . . .

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: . . . during the little time I was there.

ROSS: Seven in seven days.

STEELMAN: That's right. (Laughter) And so I knew most of the fellows, and then those I didn't know had been told by others, you know . . .

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: . . . that "Dr. Steelman would be a good boss for us to have," and so forth. So they had a new idea, maybe some outsider, some politician or somebody. They just didn't know just who might be appointed, so they said, "We better recommend Dr. Steelman." (Laughter) So they did. So I had a good start with them, you see.

ROSS: Yes.

STEELMAN: Well, the staff did not recommend Ed Warren.

ROSS: Yes.

[53]

STEELMAN: They were shocked when they heard he was appointed. They never heard of him except as a member of the War Labor Board.

ROSS: I think there was some supposition that Mr. Colvin would be named Director.

STEELMAN: Well, yes. After I left, they figured he should have. And as a matter of fact, if I'd been doing it for a while--Howard was getting up in years--I would have appointed Howard if I'd been doing it.

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: If I'd been in the White House at the time I would have seen to it that he was appointed for a time, and things would have gone more smoothly.

ROSS: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You think maybe this is again Secretary Schwellenbach's inexperience?

STEELMAN: Probably. Yes. Yes. And he wanted to do something new.

ROSS: Yes.

STEELMAN: Schwellenbach admitted that he didn't know anything about it, you know. And so he appointed a committee and he got me to come down and serve on it, to come down and serve on a committee on reorganization of the Labor Department. So I said, "Well, Judge," and he was an old friend of mine, I said, "Judge, I'm too busy to come down very long, but I could come down long enough to . . . I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll survey one of the agencies for you and give you my recommendations." And he said, "Well, which one do you want to take a look at?" I said, "Well, the one I know most about--the Conciliation Service." So I came down just to see that he didn't do anything rash. (Laughter) So at that time Colvin was Acting, you know . . .

ROSS: Yes: Yes.

STEELMAN: . . . so I came down. So I recommended that he leave the Conciliation Service alone, see? But he did do some other things, you know, upon the recommendation of other people. But he was going to shake up the whole Department, you know.

ROSS: Yes.

[54]

STEELMAN: So I said, "Leave the Conciliation Service alone." (Laughter) That was my one contribution. (Laughter) So I went back to New York. (Laughter) Then he wanted me to come back as Undersecretary and I said, "Oh, no. Not for a million I wouldn't." (Laughter)

ROSS: Well, speaking of . . .

STEELMAN: He was a good fellow, but he didn't know the Labor Department. He shouldn't have been there.

ROSS: Yes. And apparently was ill, too, part of his tenure.

STEELMAN: Well, yes. And he never was well and he never knew anything about it. Then it was unfair to him, too, for me to come to the White House, because suddenly everybody started calling me.

ROSS: Mm-hmm.

STEELMAN: And that put him in a bad spot, too. Many people thought I was really the Secretary of Labor, and he and I were very close, but the press finally decided that we . . . he and I were enemies, you know

ROSS: Hmmm.

STEELMAN: . . . which we weren't at all. We were always very close, but it was embarrassing to him . . .

ROSS: Yes.

STEELMAN: . . . to have me considered publicly as the spokesman rather than him. It was utterly unfair to him.

ROSS: Yes.

STEELMAN: And the poor man didn't last long anyway.

ROSS: Yes.

STEELMAN:A wonderful fellow and a wonderful Senator and a good judge, but not a Secretary of Labor. He was out of place.

ROSS: Yes. I'm aware of the passing time, because . . .

STEELMAN: Yes. That's all right.

[55]

ROSS: . . . it's such an enjoyable experience to sit here.

STEELMAN: Yes, that's right. Well, we'll go till six. If you say so, we'll go till six.

ROSS: Well, sure.

STEELMAN: I don't want Pearl to run off with my coat. She . .

ROSS: No, I think . . .

STEELMAN: . . . wants . . .

ROSS: . . . she's here for a while.

STEELMAN: Yes.

ROSS: I wanted to ask you--you mentioned that you served a few months under the Eisenhower administration.

STEELMAN: Mm-hmm.

ROSS: And, of course, that, from the point of view of the Mediation Service, brought in quite a shift of practice and . . .

STEELMAN: Mm-hmm.

ROSS: . . . emphasis and so forth. Mr. [Whitley] McCoy, again, a War Labor Board . . .

STEELMAN: Yes. Yes.

ROSS: . . . person, and I wonder if you could give me some of your observations of Mr. McCoy's tenure. Actually, he didn't serve very long.

STEELMAN: Not very long. No, I . . . now there's another one that I never knew how or why he got the appoint ment. He was an arbitrator and he used to work for me.

ROSS: From Alabama, as a matter of fact.

STEELMAN: Yes. Yes. Yes, and McCoy worked for me some as an arbitrator. I think I appointed him a few times, and so I knew him. And (Pause) he succeeded Warren, didn't he?

[56]

ROSS: No, no. He . . .

STEELMAN: No.

ROSS: . . . succeeded Cole.

STEELMAN: Cole. That's right. That's right. Oh, yes, he came . . .

ROSS: Mr. Cole, you remember the ....

STEELMAN: Yes. Yes.

ROSS: Actually, you might tell me . . .

STEELMAN: Well, we got . . .

ROSS: . . . some of your observations of . . .

STEELMAN: Yes.

ROSS: . . . Mr. Cole's rather stormy . . .

STEELMAN: Well, well, . . .

ROSS: . . . period then.

STEELMAN: . . . we got (Pause) . . . yes, I was confused there about when (Pause) .... Let's see, it was Ching and then Cole.

ROSS: Right. Ching resigned in September before . . .

STEELMAN: That's right.

ROSS: . . . the '48 . . . (Pause)

STEELMAN: Election. Yes.

ROSS: . . . before the (Pause) the '52 election.

STEELMAN: Oh, was it .... Yes, that's right.

ROSS: The '52 election.

STEELMAN: Yes, he stayed on. That's right. He stayed many years longer than he . . .

ROSS: Right.

[57]

STEELMAN: . . . originally planned. Then Cole came in and I've forgotten now how many years he served. Perhaps a few

ROSS: He served only about nine months.

STEELMAN: Oh, that's right. Well, he was . . .

ROSS: And almost immediately there were public speculations. Senator Alexander Smith of New Jersey . . .

STEELMAN: Yes.

ROSS: . . . was sponsoring some speculations that Mr. Cole, even though as you say was a Republican, was . . . was not going to be . . .

STEELMAN: Uh-huh.

ROSS: . . . carried forward, because anybody Mr. Truman had appointed had to go.

STEELMAN: Yes. Well, that was Sherman Adams's general idea, although I .... Cole wasn't fired, he quit, because he saw what the picture was there, see? Sherman Adams's idea was that anybody that worked for Truman . . . And if he was a Republican all the worse, you see. (Chuckle) But Cole--I've forgotten how many months he served under Eisenhower, but not many.

ROSS: Um-hmm.

STEELMAN: Not many.

ROSS: I think from October to May.

STEELMAN: May. Oh, yes. So I know he talked to me about the situation (Pause) while it was developing, and he said he couldn't work with people like that. They didn't know anything about it and it would just put him in a bad spot. And he'd be . . . instead of reporting to the White House, which the law said he would, he'd be reporting back to the Secretary of Labor, and it just . . . it was a downgrade, and he . . . he didn't like it.

ROSS: Apparently all the political pressure that you did not get under Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Truman, the Agency got under . . .