Walter Reuther to Eleanor Roosevelt

14 December 1945 [Detroit]

mrs eleanor roosevelt:

the following wire:

"200,000 gm workers their wives and their children are faced with the prospect of a bitterly cold and cheerless christmas as a result of the arrogant refusal for the giant general motors corporation to negotiate, conciliate, or arbitrate the proposal of the uaw-cio for maintenance of wartime take-home pay.⁵they have rejected our proposal of public negotiations, condemned our unwillingness to rob the consumer by accepting wage adjustments tied to price increases, and attacked our suggestion that the dispute be resolved by reference to the arithmetic in the corporation books rather than by resort to economic power. the gm workers have staked their slender resources, their willingness to walk the freezing picket lines, their very livelihoods in this fight, and they will not waver. this [is] the fight of all americans for an economy of abundance. mrs eleanor roosevelt, bishop william scarlett,⁶and bishop bernard j sheil⁷have consented to join in sponsoring formation of a committee of 100 distinguished americans to raise funds for a white christmas for every child of a gm worker.⁸we are requesting you to join with them in serving as sponsors for this committee. may we have your immediate reply to this urgent request?"

has been sent to arthur compton,⁹james b conant,¹⁰josephus daniels,¹¹marshall field,¹²harry emerson fosdick,¹³helen hayes,¹⁴henry j morganthau,¹⁵bishop g bromley oxnam,¹⁶harold urey,¹⁷walter white and rabbi stephen s wise.

we shall inform you immediately as to the replies received from these people. many thanks for your cooperation.

tel aerp, fdrl

1. Donovan, 120-21; Walter Ruch, "Renewed GM Offer of 10% Sharply Rejected by Union; Thomas Holds Out for 30%," NYT, 7 December 1945, 1.

2. As director of the Office of Price Administration, Bowles administered the agency charged with managing price, wage, and rent controls and directing rationing programs from 1941 to 1946. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Bowles battled Treasury Secretaries Fred Vinson and John Snyder over how gradually to ease wage, price, and production controls. Bowles insisted that corporate profits could handle wage increases without dramatic increases in prices. Convinced that rapid deregulation would fan inflation, he argued that there must be a systematic, gradual easing of controls and rationing in order to maintain a stable balance between wages and prices. Snyder thought this impractical and counterproductive. Bowles also battled Agriculture Secretary Clinton Anderson when Bowles recommended that Truman cut rations of meat, fats, and oils by 10 percent so that more stock could be sent to war-ravaged Europe. Truman sided with Anderson. The Office of Price Administration set price and rent controls and directed rationing in the United States from 1941 through 1946 (HSTE).

3. In 1901, Henry Ford, Sr., opened the Ford Motor Company's plant in Highland Park, Michigan, where he hoped to design a rapid assembly system for his Model T. By 1913, motors, bodies, and transmissions traveled on conveyer belts as workers stationed along the belt assembled the automobile (ANB).

4. ER to Walter Reuther, 21 December 1945, UAWPOWR, MiDW-AL; Lichtenstein, 237.

5. See n6 Document 46, and n5 Document 60.

6. William Scarlett (1883–1973), then the bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Missouri, had first sided with labor as a parish priest in Phoenix, where he quickly became known as "the one clergyman who did not fear the power of the copper mining companies." As dean of Christ Church in St. Louis, Scarlett established the Social Justice Commission and helped mediate disagreements over milk prices, a threatened strike by streetcar workers, and the dispute between the Progressive Mine Workers and their employers. A strong advocate of the social gospel, Scarlett became known as "the conscience of the church" and would work with ER on labor, human rights, and civil rights issues (ANB).

7. Bernard J. Sheil (1886–1969), the Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop for Chicago, had close ties to FDR and to labor. A good friend of Thomas ("Tommy the Cork") Corcoran, Sheil's stature in the Roosevelt administration grew when he attacked Father Charles Coughlin's anti-Roosevelt broadsides. In 1937, Sheil's strong public support of the CIO campaign to organize Chicago meat packers and his enthusiastic endorsement of John L. Lewis earned him a national reputation as a friend of labor. An outspoken critic of segregation and anti-Semitism, Sheil gave eloquent voice to his position that for democracy to work, all citizens must be included in its various endeavors (ANB).

8. This group became the National Committee to Aid the Families of GM Strikers (Lichtenstein, 237).

9. Arthur H. Compton (1892–1962), a Nobel laureate in physics and the chancellor of Washington University, also had close ties to the Roosevelt administration. In 1941, at FDR's request, Compton chaired the scientific committee charged with determining whether a nuclear weapon could be produced and, then again at FDR's request, left academe to direct the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory. After V-J Day, Compton returned to St. Louis and his duties at Washington University (ANB).

10. James B. Conant (1893–1978), the Nobel laureate in chemistry who became president of Harvard, spent the years 1939 to 1946 in the Office of Scientific Research and Development, where he helped coordinate the development of the atomic bomb and other war-specific scientific projects. As president of Harvard, his views on education became more progressive and he gradually began "to see education as a social instrument to preserve the society rather than merely as an instrument to train the most academically able" (ANB).

11. Josephus Daniels (1862–1948), a well-known North Carolina progressive and publisher, served as Woodrow Wilson's secretary of the navy which made him then Assistant-Secretary Franklin Roosevelt's immediate superior. In 1933, Daniels joined his former assistant's administration as ambassador to Mexico, where he remained committed to the Good Neighbor Policy. He returned to the Raleigh News and Observer in 1943, where his editorials championed public education and the Good Health Program (ANB).

12. Marshall Field, III (1893–1956), heir to the Chicago department store fortune, publisher, and philanthropist, was a good friend of ER's. A stalwart New Dealer, he founded the liberal, advertising-free newspaper PM and created the Chicago Sun to offer an alternative to Robert McCormick's conservative Chicago Tribune. As chief officer of the Field Foundation, he gave generous financial support to many of the organizations ER held dear—the NAACP, Roosevelt University, and Americans for Democratic Action (ANB).

13. Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969), the Social Gospel theologian for whom New York City's Riverside Presbyterian was built, became the nation's most famous liberal Protestant pastor and its most public pacifist. A popular author, professor, commanding preacher, and the voice of radio's National Vespers Hour, Fosdick, despite his close friendship with John D. Rockefeller, Jr., gave voice to mainstream liberal concerns. His daughter Dorothy would later work with ER at the first session of the United Nations in January 1946. See n19, Document 75 (ANB).

14. Helen Hayes (1900–1993), whose award-winning performances on stage and in film earned her the title first lady of American Theater, remained an outspoken philanthropist throughout her long life. The mother of a young woman with polio, Hayes served as the national spokesperson for the March of Dimes and was credited by Jonas Salk as one of the major contributors to his effort to combat the disease (ANB).

15. Henry Morgenthau (1856–1946), the successful real estate lawyer, diplomat, and philanthropist, chaired the Democratic National Committee's finance committee in 1912 and joined Wilson's administration as his ambassador to Turkey, where he handled the requests for evacuation and refugee aid with such skill that the Turks offered him a cabinet post and the British and French awarded him decorations for valiant service. In 1920, he chaired the League of Nations Refugee Board where he helped 1.25 million Greeks who had been expelled from Turkey. His ties to labor began in 1908 with his service on the tenement reform Committee on Congestion of Population and reached new levels of intensity with his appointment to the Committee of Safety, which organized in response to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Like ER, he also volunteered at Rivington Street Settlement House (ANB).

16. Garfield Bromley Oxnam (1891–1963), a Methodist bishop who then served as president of both the Federal Council of Churches and DePauw University, also worked closely with John Foster Dulles on the council's Commission on a Just and Durable Peace. In 1945, Oxnam went to Europe at the military's request to meet with army and navy chaplains and again at the end of the year to serve as chaplain to a commission charged with investigating relief and refugee matters in Germany. Beginning with his defense of the 1923 Los Angeles longshoremen's strike, Oxnam remained a strong advocate of labor, often addressing labor conventions and testifying on labor's behalf before various congressional committees (ANB). See also Document 164.

17. Harold Urey (1893–1981), a Nobel Prize-winning chemist and University of Chicago professor, also worked on the Manhattan Project; however, unlike his colleagues above, Urey became "deeply involved in efforts to control atomic energy." He protested the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, argued against an American monopoly of atomic weapons, and championed an international ban on nuclear arms and the stockpiling of atomic weapons (ANB).