Nothing Less than Catastrophic Civil War
During the winter of 1945-46, a strike wave of massive proportions swept the United States. To many American employers, these strikes signaled that a grave social, political, and economic crisis threatened the free enterprise system. By January 1946, business writer Whiting Williams proclaimed that what originally seemed "an inconvenient but more or less harmless series of industrial disputes has now become so widespread and so threatening as to look like nothing less than catastrophic civil war. Organized labor s dramatic demonstration of its power to mobilize workers made Williams's analogy of the strike wave as civil war seem increasingly relevant to many in the business community. Since the Depression, labor unions had consolidated and expanded their position in American society. Moreover, during the war, militant workers challenged managerial authority for control of the workplace. Many employers feared that the postwar strike wave augured yet another chapter in labor's growing power within the plant. At the same time, they worried about organized labor's political power and its alliance with New Deal liberals. They saw in this alliance a vivid expression of popular support for the development of a full-employment welfare state. Thus, in 1945 the business community faced the twin challenges of a struggle for control within the workplace and the defense of the free enterprise system from the growing intrusiveness of the federal government.
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Employers did not have to search back too far for a time when challenges from labor and liberalism would have seemed inconceivable. During the twenties, having beaten back the threats of craft unionism, socialism, and Progressive social reform, business reigned supreme over almost every aspect of American society. In 1921, a writer for the Independent Magazine characterized the country's mood, proclaiming that "among the nations of the earth today America stands for one idea: Business." In politics, for instance, the corporate community was closely allied with the Republican party and its influence was apparent as the government reduced taxes, cut regulations, and promoted corporate expansion. The celebration of business, though, was by no means limited to the Republican party. By 1928, both major presidential candidates were pledging "their faith to Wall Street and the self-regulating economy." Within the factory, employers asserted their dominance as labor militancy receded and organized labor became increasingly marginalized. Not content with overt control and still fearful of potential working-class militancy, however, some managers moved from repression to experimenting with scientific personnel administration, welfare capitalism, and employee representation in an effort to win workers' loyalty to the firm and the capitalist system.
Business influence and authority extended far beyond the factory and politics. In this culture, the emphasis was on consumption, individualism, and material possessions—values closely linked to business. The Lynd's study of Middietown in the twenties, for instance, describes a community in which public opinion has turned against organized labor with its mutualistic ethos. They suggested that many workers had abandoned the group solidarity of trade unionism for the individualistic rewards of consumption. Americanization campaigns during the early part of the twenties and advertising throughout the decade encouraged this reorientation. Through these means, employers associated the values of business with "traditional" American values. They trumpeted an American way rooted in individualism, Independence, freedom, and social harmony. Advertisers made certain that the public equated these ideas with consumption. Increasing consumption, of course, was critical to driving the mass production economy of the twenties.
Business also reached deeply into religious and educational institutions. Within the religious community, especially among Protestants, the emphasis on social reform declined in the 1920s. Instead, elements of the clergy praised business as the source of prosperity, success, and abundance. They attempted to emulate business methods of operation within their churches. Similarly, business values permeated the classroom. Like their clerical counterparts, in their quest for efficiency, educators modeled their schools along corporate lines. By the eve of the Depression, business had become so enmeshed in American culture that historian Thomas Cochran claimed business "enjoyed a degree of public approval unique in American history." During 1929, sixteen business leaders graced the cover of Time Magazine; Ironically; they included five in a row in the midst of the stock market collapse. 4
The dramatic economic collapse after 1929, with its devastating unemployment, disastrous drop in wages, and failure of banking and financial systems, shook many Americans' faith in the values of the business community and in corporate leadership. As Lizabeth Cohen has suggested, Depression-era workers lost confidence in the ability of either their employers or their ethnic communities to provide for their "welfare, security, and employment." Business's association of the American way with freedom, independence, individualism, competition, and consumption increasingly had little appeal to workers unable to find jobs. Workers began to define Americanism with such terms as economic equality, social justice, and human rights, in particular the right to a decent wage and to security from poverty, ill health, unemployment, and old age.
To realize these goals, workers rejected the individualistic solutions of business and began looking to the federal government and to organized labor for protection. They called for the government to control capitalism and, if necessary, to redistribute wealth and provide workers their "fair share." By 1935, a Fortune magazine survey found the vast majority of employees convinced that the government should assume responsibilities "never seriously contemplated prior to the New Deal." In the survey, 81 percent of those classified lower middle class, 89 percent of those classified as poor, and 91 percent of blacks endorsed the statement that the '"government should see to it that every man who wants to work has a job.'" To employers, such opinions indicated a complete loss in faith among workers in business and the free enterprise system.
The New Deal failed to produce the comprehensive welfare state envisioned by many workers. Nevertheless, the state grew to a degree unprecedented in peacetime and impinged in new and powerful ways on business autonomy. Indeed, the New Deal represented a turning point in the development of governmental control of the economy. The federal government, for instance, assumed a major role in managing the agricultural economy and for the first time provided direct relief to the unemployed through the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corp, and a myriad of other agencies. Through the Tennessee Valley Authority, it dabbled in planning, and legislation like the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 and the Public Utility
Holding Act of 1935 pushed federal regulation into new areas of the economy. Moreover, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, setting standards for wages and hours, and the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act, protecting workers' right to organize, enabled the federal government to directly intervene on behalf of employees. With the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935, despite all its shortcomings, America took the first halting steps toward the development of a welfare state.
With the backing of the federal government, organized labor rose up to protect the rights and welfare of workers. As a result, the 1930s and early 1940s produced a virtual revolution in the nation's industrial relations. Because we know that in the late forties and early fifties it was contained and even, in our own times, unraveled, it is easy to forget how enormous a change it represented. Powerful new organizations of workers contested employer control over hours, wages, and the conditions of work. During the war years, they even threatened to intrude upon the board room. Beyond these strategies, workers sought an alliance with Democratic politicians that aimed at refashioning the political economy of modern America.
Organized labor's resurgence began during 1933 when, under the protection of section 7a of the National Recovery Act, workers flooded the federal labor unions of the American Federation of Labor. While the NRA was a significant factor in this upsurge, not to be overlooked was the militancy and determination of a rank and file disillusioned with the promises of the twenties. These same workers soon became disappointed with the government's enforcement of the Act's provisions and triggered a wave of bitter strikes in 1934. At the polls, a new mass political mobilization recruited the urban working class, particularly second-generation immigrant wage earners, into the Democratic party. Although the upheaval collapsed, Democratic victories in the 1934 election and the lingering threat of labor militancy helped push liberals to fight for passage of the Wagner Act over the vigorous protests of corporate leaders.
The Wagner Act provided the foundations for the establishment of a pluralistic industrial relations system. The law essentially made it public policy to promote collective bargaining through independent unions. It established a code of fair practices, outlawing such traditional employer weapons as the blacklist, the yellow-dog contract, and company unions and created a new National Labor Relations Board to determine bargaining rights and to hear charges of unfair practices. I f , as later critics would note, the new legislation enfolded unions in institutional structures that would ultimately be used to contain labor's drive for power, it also provided unions with a degree of sup-port and legitimacy that they had never enjoyed before.
Even before the assurance of state support, a group of industrial unionists broke off from the AFL to form the Congress of Industrial Organizations as a vehicle for unionizing the long-ignored mass-production industries. Through a series of bitter strikes, the CIO achieved major victories in the auto, steel, and rubber industries. After initial organizing victories, CIO unions set out to make the work environment more fair and to begin strengthening new members' ties to organized labor. Stung by competition, a newly invigorated AFL expanded its organizing efforts, at times competing head to head with rival industrial unions. This was the beginning of a damaging civil war that the two national labor organizations would wage for much of the next twenty years. Although a new recession that began in 1938 and a conservative backlash temporarily ground organizing to a halt, by 1940 union membership had risen to around 9 million, having increased threefold since the start of the Depression.
Mobilization for defense and America's entrance into World War II had a profound impact on the labor movement. Mobilization ended the Depression and brought a tight labor market that enabled unions to make significant organizational and economic gains. During the conflict, the number of union members again Jumped from the 1940 9 million mark to almost IS million. Moreover, the government's wartime labor policy provided unions with organizational security through maintenance of membership contract clauses. This facilitated organized labor's consolidation of its position by breaking down many of the bastions of antiunlonism including the "Little Steel" companies. Governmental guarantees, however, were not without cost to unions. The National War Labor Board demanded not only adherence to a "no-strike" pledge but also union responsibility. Under these pressures unions became increasingly centralized and bureaucratic as they policed discontent on the shop floor through the establishment of formal grievance and arbitration procedures.
Many managers, however, found little comfort in the concept of responsible unionism. From their perspective, they faced an unprecedented challenge from organized labor. Wartime economic conditions, including scare labor, "cost plus" financing, and the necessity for continuous production, contributed both to the growth of unions and to the loss of managerial authority on the shop floor. Wartime wildcat strikes in defiance of the no-strike pledge were just the most dramatic symbols of the decline of managerial power. In many factories, discipline was lax and workers defiant. Aggressive union representatives demanded and received a voice in setting and enforcing production standards. According to employers, all this intervention added up to declining productivity.
As the war ended, managers fretted that the long upsurge of labor had left virtually none of their rights secure. Participants at a 1944 American Management Association round table discussion observed that "management has an uneasy feeling that its prerogatives are slipping from it into the hands of unions." To business writers like Whiting Williams, the National War Labor Board's expansion of the scope of collective bargaining made the government appear to be in "active partnership" with the CIO. Even more ominously, unions were attempting to bargain for such devices as mutual consent clauses, which limited management's right to initiate change, or the establishment of joint committees that would give labor equal voice in planning and decision making. Thomas Roy Jones, president of the American Type Founders, foresaw no limit to the future demands of power hungry labor leaders. "Annual wages, private social security systems, early retirements, long vacations, 25-hour weeks—are completely within the realm of economic possibility." If business did not stop this trend, Roy predicted, "a condition of industrial chaos eventually will ensue."
The end of the war in August 1945 ignited the already explosive atmosphere of labor-capital relations. Massive layoffs swelled the ranks of the unemployed and, for those still working, income dropped as the return to the normal work week resulted in the loss of overtime earnings. In response, unions ended their no-strike pledge, and frustrated workers walked out, initiating one of the largest strike waves in American history. In the year after V-J Day, there were 4,630 work stoppages, involving almost 5 million workers, resulting in the loss of 119.8 million man-days of production. Labor struggles in communities like Stamford, Connecticut; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and Rochester, New York; took on the characteristics of class warfare, ex-panding into citywide general strikes.
Most alarming for the business community were the Issues raised in the General Motors strike that began in late November 1945. One student of the strike concluded that Walter Reuther "consciously politicized the GM strike by challenging managerial control of product pricing and by emphasizing the stake the consuming public had in the victory of the auto workers." His demand that the auto company open its books to union contract negotiators in order to link wages and prices to profits seemed to employers to strike at the very essence of capitalism. Moreover, by treading on the most sacred of managerial prerogatives, Reuther epitomized the mounting threat unions posed to employer control over their own firms.
By the war's end, some employers charged that not only business but also the entire country was now held hostage by the "monopolistic power" exercised by a handful ot Irresponsible labor leaden. The National Association of Manufacturers chairman. Ira Mosher, bluntly charged that "Reuther decides whether or not we can have automobiles. Murray decides when we can have steel to build automobiles or refrigerators or homes," Meanwhile, Lewis "determines whether we shall have coal to turn the wheel of our industry, to heat and light our homes." And finally "as if this were not enough, Pet-rillo decides when and how we can have music."
Labor's threat to business power radiated far beyond the shop floor. The fledgling relationship organized labor began with the Democratic party in 1934 had blossomed Into a full blown alliance. As Nelson Lichtenstein has observed, by 1940 "the CIO had built a dense web of political and emotional connections with the Roosevelt administration." At the core of this alliance were workers who looked to the Democratic party to pursue their class Interests." The formation of a powerful Political Action Committee in mid-1943 provided the organizational structure to enable the labor movement to play a more decisive role in the nation's political life. During the 1944 election, the PAC supported a broad liberal program and helped revitalize the New Deal coalition. After the election, the CIO seemed to be laying the groundwork for a progressive postwar reconstruction effort. Among the central goals on labor's agenda were full employment, economic planning, and a fuller articulation of the welfare state through an expansion of Social Security and unemployment Insurance, and the development of a national health program. Labor's economic vision found legislative expression before the war's end in January 194S with the Introduction of the Full Employment Bill. Written by liberal economists working in wartime regulatory agencies, It promised to Institutionalize the wartime state management of the economy and to make Keyneslan social planning public policy. The Full Employment Bill had the support of a broad liberal-labor coalition that Included the AFL, the CIO, the NAACP, and the National Farmers Union. In early 1945, given the widespread concern reflected in opinion polls about economic readjustment after the war, the measure seemed destined to become law."
While the PAC gained perhaps an undeserved reputation for political power, its attempt to supplement collective bargaining with political activity alarmed the business community. "From the standpoint of the ultimate welfare of the people of the United States", wrote one Missouri business executive, "I think there is no question but that if labor is permitted to consolidate its power," and to use that power to elect more liberals like "Claude Peppers and Wallaces to positions of authority, we shall find ourselves in a position in which labor is stronger than the government of the United States and is able to dictate to it".
By the late 1930s, some American business leaders were already struggling, often unsuccessfully, against what seemed to them to be a revolution both in their Industrial relations and in the larger political economy. Although this opposition would be modified somewhat by the experience and successes of business during World War II. at war's end, much of the business community was convinced that America was in the midst of a serious social, political, and economic crisis. It was against this background that the American business community mobilized vigorously to roll back the power of labor in the factory and to regain control over the larger political process.
Although by 1945 many corporate leaders were uniting in a determination to resist the expansion of labor's power and to refashion the New Deal state, the business community was not monolithic. The solutions to the crisis that corporate leaden posed roughly reflected the division of the business community into two ideological camps. Traditional or practical conservatives, often associated with the National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber of Commerce, tended to distrust the state and to call for the dismantling of much of the New Deal. They especially denounced the meddling of the government in a peacetime economy through wage and price controls or through Keyneslan fiscal policies. Business leaders like Donaldson Brown of General Motors, J. Howard Pew of Sun Oil, and Ernest T. Weir of National Steel Corporation spoke of the centrallty of freedom and the value of Individual Initiative and competition. Abridgement of economic freedom would Inevitably lead to such disasters as compulsory state control and possibly even extreme collectivism. Thus, the vice-chairman of the United Aircraft Corporation, Eugene E. Wilson, warned that unless America returned to Its fundamental principles, "Christian freedom will give way to atheistic slavery, cooperation to compulsion, hope to fear, equality of opportunity to privilege, and the dead hand of bureaucracy will close the throttle on progress.
Traditional conservatives particularly chafed at the abridgement of their economic freedom in the realm of industrial relations. The growth of unionism in the 1930s and especially under the auspices of the National War Labor Board seemingly Imposed strict limits on employer freedom of action. Conservative employers viewed unions as illegitimate, outside forces that fomented trouble and undermined the naturally close relations between worker and employer. Some staunch antiunion firms, such as Welrton Steel and Du Pont, successfully opposed organizing drives. Other companies, like General Motors, forced to recognize unions, still refused to accept their permanence. These companies promoted a strategy that historian Howell John Harris has labeled "realism". It entailed reluctant acceptance of the principle of unionism while actively attempting to restrict the scope of collective bargaining and to contain or weaken the power of organized labor. At the same time, in politics, the owners of these firms backed the NAM In Its campaign for the repeal or amendment of the Wagner Act to protect employers against the -monopolistic power of unions.
At the other end of the spectrum were the more sophisticated conservatives or moderates who joined together during the thirties in organizations like the Business Advisory Council and in the lorries, the Committee for Economic Development. These corporate leaders were less concerned with protecting competition. They sought to moderate the New Deal, not destroy it. In contrast with Donaldson Brown, CED founders like Marlon Folson of Eastman Kodak, Ralph Flanders, and Paul G. Hoffman of Studebaker Automobile Company, looked to central economic planning, although primarily Influenced by business, to ensure prosperity. Hoffman borrowed a line from the NAM conservatives when he dramatically warned in 1943 that collectivism could come to postwar America. However, he certainly shocked conservatives when he claimed that its source would be bust-ness's failure to protect against mass unemployment through planning. To Hoffman it would more likely come by default than by "design on the part of revolutionaries".
The CED asserted that America could no longer afford wild economic fluctuations. Instead of "ignorant opposition to change," the business community should help define a new role for the state to promote economic growth and stability. In 1946, Hoffman challenged corporate leaders to "look one important fact squarely in the face — that the Federal Government has a vital role to play in our capitalistic system". NAM conservatives "who claimed that all that is necessary is to "unshackle free enterprise" are guilty of an irresponsible statement," he went on. "Those who say that the Federal Government's role is only that of an umpire have their heads in the sand." The CED's corporat-ist message was that enlightened employers should not reject the state but should provide positive policy programs to guide the government in promoting a "recognizable general interest."
Moderates tended to take an accommodationistic attitude toward organized labor. Rather than fearing unions, some welcomed them with open arms. Such progressive industrialists as Henry Kaiser or Eric Johnston believed that if properly directed, unions could "contrib-ute to increased industrial efficiency and social responsibility. They acknowledged unions as legitimate representatives of employees and welcomed the cooperative arrangements that government agencies promoted during the war. Through these means and without giving up real power, these executives hoped to gain organized labor's cooperation in increasing productivity and industrial stability. To these employers, the NLRB was not an enemy but an ally in the develop-ment of responsible unionism.
Any attempt to categorize employers into two camps obviously slights many shadings and variations. The business community had many divisions within it and individual employers often demonstrated little ideological consistency. Many members of the CED, like Henning W. Prentis of Armstrong Cork, Harry Bullis of General Mills, Charles R. Hook of Armco and S. C. Allyn of National Cash Register, were also prominent NAM activists. These men might accept an enlightened attitude toward an activist state but scowl at progressive labor policy within their own plants. The CED, in fact, worked hard not to alienate the more conservative employers, and such individuals as Walter D. Fuller, president of Curtis Publishing Company, could direct Information committees for both organizations. Fuller seemingly had little difficulty with spreading the apparently contradictory messages of the NAM and the CED to the business community and to the public.
A partial mobilization of the business community actually began in the late thirties. Certainly some "enlightened" business leaders were at the forefront of the New Deal, hoping to use the state to help revitalize the economy. But an equally powerful group of employers were adamantly opposed to reforms like the WPA, Wagner Act and Social Security, which they saw as attacking individualism and freedom. The NAM and the American Liberty League, formed in 1934 and financed by a core of wealthy conservative business leaders, including J. Howard Pew, John J. Raskob and the Du Ponts, led the corporate opposition to the New Deal and the rise of labor. The NAM, for one, lobbied hard against the passage of the Wagner Act. After the Act was declared constitutional in 1937, employers, allied with conservative Republicans, southern Democrats and the AFL, which felt that the NLRB was hostile to craft unionism, attacked the Board demanding balance and equality in the law. While the attack was not entirely successful, it helped create enough public opposition to force Roosevelt to appoint a labor board less sympathetic to Industrial unionism. Congress, meanwhile, empowered the Smith Committee to Investigate the Board. As they waged war on the NLRB, business leaders also provided key support to a conservative backlash that followed the recession of 1937-38. In this atmosphere, toward the end of the thirties, the legislative agenda of the New Deal was narrowed and a number of Industrial states enacted antllabor statutes.
An Important part of this early mobilization was an effort to turn public opinion against the New Deal. As criticism of business reached new heights and workers turned to unions and the state for leadership, employers looked to public relations to restore their legitimacy. The NAM argued that industry's problems were primarily the result of public misunderstanding. It appealed to the business community to launch 'an active campaign of education" to "tell its story." Business needed to restore the public's faith in its leadership and to promote the corporate vision of the American way. A vision that emphasized freedom, Individualism, and harmony between employer and employee."
In the last part of the 1930s, the NAM, other employer associations, and individual firms launched a campaign to convert the American public to the economic goals, ideals, and program of business. The NAMS budget for public relations shot up from $36,000 In 1934 to $793,043 in 1937 representing 55 percent of the organization's total income. The NAM utilized numerous communications media, including weekly radio programs, film strips, educational films, paid advertisements, direct mail, displays for schools and plants, a speakers bureau, and an industrial press service, providing editorials and news stories to seventy-five hundred small papers. By 1940, the NAM was beginning to experiment with methods to more systematically Influence the institutions of education and religion and to reach more directly into the community with the story of free enterprise. General Electric and other firms supplemented the NAMS efforts with films, traveling Industrial exhibits, merchandise displays, and pamphlets and programs for school children. Some of these corporate efforts, like Westinghouse's Middleton Family at the Worlds Fair, which celebrated the abundance of consumer goods in America, were a fairly sophisticated and subtle rendering of free enterprise ideology. Nevertheless, through the thirties, enough of the corporate campaign was marred by extremist, overt attacks on unions, and the New Deal that it was easy for critics to dismiss the entire effort as mere propaganda.
If World War II enabled the labor movement to grow dramatically, it also offered the business community the opportunity to regain some of its lost power and prestige. The wartime "miracle of production" brought renewed authority as industry's leaders demanded and received the largest voice in establishing policy concerning economic mobilization. Business leaders drew on their new influence with government to encourage the more conservative wartime Congress to begin dismantling some of the New Deal. Finally, in 1943 Congress passed the Smith-Connally War Labor Disputes Act, which aimed at limiting labor's economic and political power.
For corporate leaders, war production symbolized one of the finest hours of the free enterprise system. General Motors Vice Chairman Donaldson Brown attributed successful economic mobilization to the "exercise of individual initiative" and to the efficiency inspired by "long years of competitive effort strengthened by the stimulus and incentive of the profit motive." Similarly, in December 1942 at the NAMS annual meeting, H. W. Prentis, chairman of the NAM'S Executive Committee, expressed disdain for the "childlike" faith many had recently put in government. He asserted that "it is not government that has wrought the miracle that is being accomplished today in the production of war materials but the initiative, ingenuity and organizing genius of private enterprise." This was the message that much of the business community wanted the public to take from the wartime experience.
Business leaders worried, however, that wartime economic success sent a different message. Since much occurred within the context of government regulation and regimentation, the war mobilization possibly taught the public that government control, economic planning, and the welfare state were key to continued prosperity. Writing only six months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Donaldson Brown already worried that the "public has not come to distinguish between the necessity of centralized planning and regimentation in time of war, and the exercise of corresponding functions on the part of government in the time of peace." Brown feared that those with "ulterior motives" were going to "seize the occasion to contend that the wartime system under which industrial production has worked such wonders could be extended and applied with equal benefit and ef-fectiveness in the post-war economy.
To prevent this from happening, the NAM continued its steadfast support for individualism and freedom from government interference and vowed to "oppose anybody who tries to destroy" these "freedoms when peace comes." The need for wartime unity, however, stopped outright attacks against New Deal liberalism and labor. The NAMS public relations program continued but in more muted, subtle terms. It moved toward refurbishing the negative image the NAM had gained from its Depression-era public relations campaign and toward rein-vigorating business leadership. To build up business's reputation, the NAMS radio programs, press releases, pamphlets, and speakers publicized American industries' vital contributions to the war effort. Moreover, they constantly linked production accomplishments to the free enterprise system, reminding the public that they were fighting to preserve "the freedoms and liberties upon which the American way of life has been based." As for the postwar era, the NAM urged that the key to a higher standard of living was increasing productivity, not labor's plan of a government-ordered economy and a state-engi-neered redistribution of income.
The epitome of this effort was the NAM-initiated community-based program, "Soldiers of Production." Begun in 1943, this program was designed to reach industrial workers through inspirational talks on company time. Over the next two years, hundreds of thousands of workers attended "Soldiers of Production" rallies during which NAM speakers urged greater cooperation between workers and management and a renewed commitment by all to the free enterprise system.
Individual corporations followed in the NAM's steps with advertisements in popular weekly magazines or on the radio, emphasizing protecting America's freedom of enterprise and rugged individualism. A Nash-Kelvinator Corporation piece printed in full color, for example, depicts a young American soldier quietly reflecting on what kind of an America he yearns for when he returns: "I'm not playing for marbles. I'm fighting for freedom. I'm fighting for the things that made America the greatest place in the world to live in.... So don't anybody tell me I'll find America changed." Other employers emphasized the same theme of "Don't Change Anything!" The implication was that America should be restored to the status quo of the twenties when private industry rather than government safeguarded the public interest.
Repeating the now familiar dire litany of warnings for the survival of private enterprise, the NAM tried to activate even more of the business community to stand up in its defense. Thus, the organization supplemented its own public relations efforts with a program of public relations forums. These meetings were designed to educate employers about the importance of spreading the kind of message found in the Nash-Kelvinator advertisement and to provide practical lessons on how to reach the public and workers within the plant. Two forums held during the war and one shortly after spoke to the need for a broad, active, conservative business response to the problem of excessive government intervention in the economy. 7
The NAM was not the only element of the business community publicizing a postwar vision. The CED had as its principal founding goal in 1942 the formulation of a constructive postwar economic policy. It sponsored research into reconversion problems and, through its Field Development Division and Information Department, sought to educate employers and popularize its economic vision. By the end of the war over twenty-eight hundred autonomous CED committees were working to achieve the CED objectives of postwar business expansion and level employment. Remaining nonpartisan, it offered constructive solutions for economic reconversion that included a significant, if circumscribed, role for the government. While differing on the issue of the level of acceptable state involvement in the economy, the CED joined with the NAM in emphasizing the importance of increasing productivity and preserving a free society. Although its focus was primarily on educating the business community, the CED reached out to the public through a weekly national radio program to allay the "fear of fear itself and to ensure that the people were "informed on what the problems of reconversion are, and how they are being met
The Chamber of Commerce, at least during the war, pursued goals similar to the CED. In 1942, the Chamber initiated structural changes to reinvigorate the organization. To enhance its political influence, the Chamber of Commerce established a Department of Governmental Affairs to lobby Congress. It also formed eight hundred local-level national affairs committees to mobilize public opinion and apply political pressure. The leadership of the organization temporarily shifted hands from an old guard of traditional conservatives to a new group of cautious moderates led by Eric Johnston. Under Johnston's leadership, the Chamber officially moved closer to the sort of economic policies endorsed by the CED. That is, it accepted the inevitability of government intervention in the economy but was prepared to act decisively in defining the state s role.
Although the CED's economic message certainly conflicted in key areas with that of the NAM, both organizations agreed on the necessity of further mobilizing the business community. The principal point of agreement appeared to be the effort to offset the growing influence of organized labor. Indeed, battles fought in the immediate postwar years over full employment, price controls, and labor legislation drew the groups closer together and encouraged business leaders to seek greater cooperation on at least the basic issues of the postwar economy.
Notes
1. Whiting Williams, "The Public Is Fed Up with the Union Mess," FMM 104 Oan. 1946): 97.
2. Independent Magazine quoted in Paul S. Boyer, et al., The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, vol. 2, (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1990), pp. 833-34; Thomas Cochran, The American Business System: A Historical Perspective, 1900-1955 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 140; David Brody, Workers in Industrial America: Essays on the Twentieth Century Struggle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), chap. 2.
3. James Oliver Robertson, America's Business (New York: Hill and Wang, 1985), pp. 210-15; Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merreil Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1956). On advertising see Charles McGovern, "The Political Language of American Advertising, 1890-1940" (Paper presented at the 1991 American Studies Conference, Baltimore, Maryland, Oct. 1991), and Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
4. Rolf Lunden, Business and Religion in the American 1920s (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988); Joel Spring, The American School, 1642-1985, (New York: Longman, 1986) pp. 222-52; Cochran, The American Business System, p. 140; W. A. Swanberg, Luce and His Empire (New York: Dell Publishing, 1972), pp. 121-22.
5. Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 252-89, esp. 268.
6. Fortune survey quoted in Cohen, Making a New Deal, pp. 281-82, also 267-89.
7. Albert U. Romansco, Tfie Politics of Recovery: Roosevelt's New Deal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 219.
8. Robert Zieger, American Worker, American Unions, 1920-1985 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 26-41; James R. Green, The World of the Worker: Labor in Twentieth-Century America (New York: HH1 and Wang, 1980), pp. 133-55.
9. Robert Zieger, American Worker, American Unions, pp. 40-41. Among critics of Wagner Act, see especially Christopher Tomlins, The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880-1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
10. Zieger, American Workers, American Unions, pp. 41-61; Howell John
Harris, The Right to Manage: Industrial Relations Policies of American Business in the 1940s (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), pp. 23-40.
11. Joel Seidman, American Labor from Defense to Reconversion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 91-108; Harris, The Right to Manage, pp. 41-89; Nelson Lichtenstein, Labor's War at Home: The CIO in World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 44-47.
12. Lichtenstein, Labor's War at Home, pp. 117-35; Harris, The Right to Manage, pp. 60-74.
13. "A New Pattern of Labor Relations: Trends in Union Contract Clauses, A Round Table Discussion/' AMA Personnel Series No. 79 (1944), pp. 27-29; Whiting Williams, "Shall Labor Bargain with Government or Employers?," FMM 104 (Feb. 1946): 108; Thomas R. Jones, "The Scope of Collective Bargaining," AMA Personnel Series No. 81 (1944), pp. 40-51; Harris, The Right to Manage, pp. 44-59, 67-74.
14. David Brody, Workers in Industrial America, p. 174; George Lipsitz, Class
and Culture in Cold War America: "A Rainbow at Midnight* (South Hadley, Mass.: J. F. Bergin, 1982), chaps. 2-4.
15. Lichtenstein, Labor's War at Home, p. 225.
16. Ira Mosher, "Labor Legislation—Then What?" (Address before Chicago Industrial Conference, May 24, 1946), Ace. 1412, NAM, Industrial Relations Department Papers, Box 13. Mosher was attacking Walter Reuther, president of the UAW, John L Lewis, president of the UMW, and James C. Petrlllo, president of the American Federation of Musicians.
17. Lichtenstein, Labor's War at Home, p. 33. If, as some critics would later argue, this alliance robbed labor of its radicalism and made it vulnerable, it also afforded labor a degree of influence that it had never before enjoyed. On the problematic relationship between labor and the Democratic party see Mike Davis, Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the US Working Class (London: Verso, 1986), chap. 2; Brody, Workers in Industrial America, chap. 6.
18. James Caldwell Foster, The Union Politic: The CIO Political Action Committee (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1975), pp. 50-51; Robert M. Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, 1929-1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), pp. 99-101.
19. Business executive quoted Christopher L. Tomlins, The State and the Unions, p. 248; Foster, The Union Politic, pp. 40-48.
20. Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, chap. 3.
21. Eugene E. Wilson, "Give the U.S.A. Back to the American People," FMM 104 (May 1946): 96; Richard S. Tedlow, Keeping the Corporate Image: Public Relations and Business, 1900-1950 (Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press, 1979), pp. 117-21.
22. Harris, The Right to Manage, pp. 23-32, 95-104.
23. Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, chap. 3; "Business Plans for the Postwar," The Republican, Apr. 1943, p. 4, Box 103, Paul G. Hoffman Papers, HST.
24. Paul G. Hoffman, "The Survival of Free Enterprise," HBR 25 (Autumn
1946): 23-24; Thomas B. McCabe, "The Committee for Economic Development—Its Past, Present and Future" (Address before the Semi-Annual Meeting of the CED Board of Trustee, Nov. 17, 1949), pamphlet, Box 78, Lou E. Holland Papers, HST; Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, p. 85.
25. Harris, The Right to Manage, p. 35.
26. Ibid., pp. 32-33, 135-39; Uchtenstein, Labor's War at Home, pp. 217-19.
27. Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, p. 73; Richard Tedlow, Keeping the Corporate Image, p. 122; Walter D. Fuller to Members of the Committee on Cooperation with Community Leaders, Jan. 19, 1949, Accession 1411, NAM, Series I, Box 109 (hereafter Ace. 1411, NAM 1/109); Paul G. Hoffman to Lou Holland, Oct. 14, 1946, Box 162, Holland Papers.
28. Robert F. Burk, The Corporate State and the Broker State: The Du Fonts and American National Politics, 1925-1940 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 143-277; Anthony J. Badger, The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940 (New York: Noonday Press, 1989), pp. 285-98. On attack on NLRB see James A. Gross, The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board: National Labor Policy in Transition, 1937-1947 (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1981).
29. Tedlow, Keeping the Corporate Image, pp. 61-63.
30. S. H. Walker and Paul Aklar, Business Finds Its Voice: Management's Efforts to Sell the Business Idea to the Public (New York: Harper and Bros, 1938);
William Bird, "Enterprise and Meaning: Sponsored Film, 1939-1949," History Today 39 (Dec. 1989): 24-30; Tedlow, Keeping the Corporate Image, pp. 63 -70, 81-105.
31. Joel Seidman, American Labor from Defense to Reconversion, pp. 67-73.
32. Donaldson Brown to W. P. Withrow, July 31, 1942, Ace. 1411, NAM 1/112; NAM News: War Congress of American Industry Dec. 12, 1942, p. 13, Ace. 1411, NAM 111/845.
33. Brown to W. P. Withrow, July 31, 1942.
34. NAM News, Dec. 12, 1942, p. 32; C. E. Harrison to Mr. Weisenburger, Dec 18,1944, C. E. Harrison to N.I.I.C. Staff Executives, n.d.. Ace. 1411, NAM IH/845; National Industrial Information Committee, Annual Report, 1943, Morris Sayre, "Tomorrow's America" (Address before Massachusetts Farm and Industry Conference, Amherst, Mass., May 11,1944) Ace. 1411, NAM 111/842.
35. "Soldiers of Production," n.d. Ace. 1411, NAM 111/842; "Soldiers of Production: Industry's 'Double-E' Drive," c. 1943, NAM III/84S.
36. Victor H. Bernstein, "The Anti-Labor Front," Antioch Review 3 (Sept. 1943): 330; "Advertising in Wartime," New Republic, Feb. 21, 1944, pp. 233-36.
37. Tedlow, Keeping the Corporate Image, p. 120.
38. CE.D. News, Apr. 1945, p. 4, Sept. 1945, p. 15, Box 29, Hoffman Papers; Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, pp. 83-86.
39. Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, pp. 88-98.