Two Americas
06-04-2009, 02:54 PM
Just who was Reverend Bradford?
http://labornotes.org/songs/graphics/lewisBradford.jpg
He was the odd one, some family members said. He was one of five cousins, all ministers - but it was Lewis who, in the middle of the Great Depression, left his job as minister of a church, with its guaranteed income. He felt that his calling was with poor and working people who were being hit so hard. But this decision was tough on his own family. One daughter, "Little Ella", had a serious medical condition, and needed surgery. A sympathetic doctor in Detroit, Dr. Frank Sladen, who also happened to be the head of the Henry Ford Hospital, offered to help, and the family moved to that city.
Barely keeping hunger away from the door himself, Bradford began working for the Detroit Department of Public Welfare, where he visited Hoovervilles, and saw how the layoffs were destroying lives, and how hunger stalked the city. At one hospital in Detroit, a physician reported that four persons a day were dying, "Too far gone from starvation for their lives to be saved." (p. 57, Working Detroit, by Steve Babson, Ron Alpern, Dave Elsila, and John Revitte, 1984).
Bradford's family recalled how one day on his way home from work, he gave away his last dollar, only to come home to find there was no food in the house. (Interview June 11, 2001, with Lewis Bradford's son-in-law Dr. Robert Loftfield, and granddaughter Lore Loftfield, Kensington, MD).
"Forgotten Man's Hour" on WXYZ - Lewis Bradford
Thursday evenings in Detroit, Reverend Lewis Bradford broadcast a radio show on WXYZ, "The Forgotten Man's Hour," interviewing men and women on the soup line at the Howard Street Mission. They told their stories of being laid-off; the difficulties of factory work; stories of trying to care for their families, often sending money to families living in a different city. They talked about organizing the union.
Bradford had a close friend helping him at the Howard Street Mission, Allen Brett, who raised money and was a social activist in Detroit. Brett's father-in-law was Bishop Charles D. Williams of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, and family pastor to Henry and Clara Ford. Curiously, as Bishop of the Episcopal Church of Michigan, Williams was known as the "Red Bishop," for his stance in favor of workers.
"Hour of Power" on WJR - Charles Coughlin
During this same period, another voice had a radio show in Detroit, Sunday afternoons, on WJR. Father Charles Coughlin broadcast "The Hour of Power," with a nationwide listenership of 40 million in the 1930's (p. 34, Father Coughlin: The Tumultuous Life of the Priest of the Little Flower, by Sheldon Marcus, 1973). He raised huge amounts of money on the radio. And while at the beginning of the Depression Coughlin sounded like a Populist in the tradition of Huey Long, he became more and more extreme. Jewish bankers caused the Depression, he said. Hitler and Mussolini, while stern authoritarians, should be supported, because that's what it takes to get rid of Communists. "Coughlin berated Jews, he berated Blacks, he was just hateful," recalled Allen Brett's daughter Mary (Phone Interview with Mary Daniels (nee Brett), September 11, 2001).
The Ford Hunger March
Ford blamed the depression on the poor, and said in March, 1931, "These are really good times, but only if you know it. . . The average man won't really do a day's work unless he is caught and cannot get out of it." (p. 25, The Ford Hunger March, by Maurice Sugar, 1980). Ford refused to pay into an unemployed person's fund.
On March 7, 1932, thousands of unemployed workers marched on the Ford Motor Company. Led by Communist organizers, these were desperate workers, poor, ragged. Evictions were rampant throughout this period, and the previous week, a number of the marchers, including Joe DeBlasio, helped stop police from evicting an African American man from his home. (p. 81, Brother Bill McKie by Phillip Bonosky, 1953).
They marched from Detroit to the River Rouge plant. Their signs read, "We Want Bread Not Crumbs," "Tax the Rich, Feed the Poor," "Free the Scottsboro Boys," and "Stop Jim Crow." At the Dearborn line, the crowd was told to disperse. None of the marchers was armed, but teargas and fire hoses were used on the crowd. Finally, the order to shoot was given - scores were wounded. Killed outright were Joe York, Joe DeBlasio, Coleman Leny, and Joe Bussell.
They were buried in Woodmere Cemetery. An African American man, Curtis Williams, died a short while later, but the cemetery would not allow an African American to be buried along with his comrades. They say his ashes were scattered over the River Rouge plant from an airplane.
I met Dave Elsila, retired editor of the UAW newspaper, Solidarity. Along with Steve Babson and others Dave made a project of getting gravestones for the 5 killed, 50 years afterwards, including a gravestone for Curtis Williams. We visited the graves, the smokestacks of the Rouge towering just behind the markers.
The Ford Hunger March became international news in 1932. Scott Nearing, noted economist and lecturer visited Detroit at this time and gave a talk entitled, "Must We Starve," where he defended the Hunger Marchers. (p. 123, The Ford Hunger March, by Maurice Sugar, 1980). By this time Henry Ford had become the richest man in the world - in the years 1921-22 he had made $200 million in net profit. (p. 80, The Legend of Henry Ford by Keith Sward, 1948). Nearing contrasted the attitudes of Ford, living at the Fairlane estate, and the needs of poor people living in Hoovervilles.
Ford had carefully cultivated an image over the years as the kindly inventor who upheld old-fashioned values. But in this period of time, his anti-unionism and anti-communism became so extreme that he became an enthusiastic backer of Hitler. A weekly newspaper put out by Ford, the Dearborn Independent, carried 91 installments of anti-Semitic and racist diatribes, all assembled in one book, The International Jew. It was a bestseller in Germany. Third Reich offices were filled with copies. In the 1920's, the daughter-in-law of the composer Wagner came to Ford asking for funds for the Nazis. (p. 225, Henry Ford, Wayward Capitalist, by Carol Gelderman, 1981). It is unknown the extent of support, but Hitler kept a full-length oil portrait of Henry Ford in his office in Munich.
The River Rouge Plant
In April 1936, Bradford went to work on the assembly line at the Ford River Rouge plant, with a spirit of hope, and anticipation that his visions could come true at the Rouge, the biggest battleground in the 1930's for the hearts and minds of American workers.
The Rouge was a marvel of the Industrial Age when built in the 1920's. It was the largest factory in the world. One hundred thousand workers worked its assembly line. The raw materials were brought into the plant, and thirty-three hours later, a fully assembled car rolled off the line. Diego Rivera's mural in the Detroit Institute of the Arts depicted the Rouge, and its "imaginative power, its physical complexity and its sheer brutality," according to Nelson Lichtenstein. (p. 17, Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit, by Nelson Lichtenstein, 1995). It was Edsel Ford, Henry Ford's son, who saw that Diego Rivera, a world-famous artist who also happened to be a Communist, got his commission. Edsel defended the decision, and in sharp contrast to the Rockefellers, who had the Rivera mural in the Rockefeller Center destroyed, the Rouge mural stands to this day.
The Rouge and the Ford Motor Company were inspirations for m
any of the world's greatest artistic ruminations on the relationship of humanity to the machine: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, and novels like Upton Sinclair's Flivver King which depicted the brutal reign of Ford and Bennett at the Rouge.
As Bradford began working at the Rouge, Bennett was assembling a collection of security guards using ties to the underworld, as well as a special relationship with Harry H. Jackson of the Michigan prison system. (p. 298, The Legend of Henry Ford by Keith Sward, 1948). Release felons early, and Bennett would give them a gun and a nightstick, and a job at the Rouge performing "security."
At the same time, a team of labor organizers were working to bring the workers into the newly formed United Auto Workers union. Carl Haessler, editor of the West End Conveyor, the UAW newspaper for Local 174 during this time, was a Rhodes scholar. Many of the organizers were idealistic and bright men and women. The contrast between the union and Ford's thugs could not have been starker.
African Americans and the Success of the CIO
As one of the newly formed CIO unions, the UAW was organizing skilled and unskilled workers industry-wide. A special effort was being made to fight racism within the ranks of workers. For the first time in history, African-Americans were organizing on the basis of equality into the nation's new trade unions.
Elise Bryant, my friend and colleague, described how at the same time Ford was laying off 75,000 workers in Detroit, her father, along with many other African-American workers, was recruited in Alabama by flyers promising "guaranteed work, good pay." Ford and Bennett worked hard through this time to develop pools of workers they were convinced would not be "contaminated" by the union message. In her dad's case, the strategy didn't work.
Many African-American workers, though, had mixed feelings. While relegated to the hardest, most dangerous jobs (Elise's father worked in the Rouge foundry), at lower pay, Ford at least gave them a job.
Historian Steve Babson speaks of the successful CIO drives through this time: "It was, above all, the decade-long shift in the attitudes and politics of Detroit's Black community that finally tipped the scales in favor of the union." (p.105, Working Detroit, by Steve Babson, Ron Alpern, Dave Elsila, and John Revitte, 1984).
As the union grew, activists like the NAACP's Walter White worked to unite the communities. UAW attorney Maurice Sugar defended the rights of African- Americans in his campaign for recorder's-court. ("It's About Time", a campaign tabloid, 1931, cited on p. 157, Maurice Sugar: Law, Labor, and the Left in Detroit, 1912-1950, by Christopher Johnson, 1988). Blacks found they could become union leaders: chief shop steward at Chrysler was an African-American man, Samuel Fanroy. Cadillac had Black shop stewards, along with higher wages. These were strong inducements to join up. Wrote the Afro-American, on June 26, 1937 about organizing in Detroit's auto plants: "There are at present a few scattered units affiliated with AFL, but because the doors of this body have been closed in the face of most colored craftsmen, it is too late for it to make sincere overtures now. . . The CIO is the union movement going directly down our street."
Ford and Bennett watched in horror as the sit-down strikes swept Detroit and the nation. In February 1937 workers at the GM plant in Flint, Michigan, won the union. The years of struggle, of fighting the company goons, and often the police and state troopers allied with the industrialists, was culminating in victory. Author Arthur Miller observed the events at Flint, and paraphrasing the poet W.B. Yeats, wrote, "A new beauty was being born." (p. 267, Timebends, by Arthur Miller, 1987).
Lewis Bradford
Many Bradford relatives came to visit our home in Maryland, driving or flying from various parts of the country. One granddaughter said, "I'm just sure there's a diary. I've seen it, and it's in Albuquerque." Two weeks later, I got a call from Ella-Kari Loftfield - "We found the diary!" It was written by Lewis in the years leading up to the murder, and Ella wrote in it as well. Ella-Kari caught a plane 5 days later. I picked her up at the airport, and she was cradling the special document safely in her arms.
Reading the diary, we learned about Lewis's transition from minister to organizer. He wrote in the third person, "The real reason for Lewis being in Detroit is that he should make a guided approach toward meeting the spiritual need of Detroit. This is to be done at present, through his work, not as an evangelist." (Entry in Lewis Bradford's diary, April 20, 1935).
Ella and Lewis learned that the surgeries for Little Ella, arranged for by Dr. Sladen, were successful. The family celebrated. Lewis had a job, an income. And while Ella worried about the dangers in the factory, she supported Lewis's efforts.
They had an affectionate relationship. Lewis wrote in a letter: "I can see you right there with your face between my two hands and love light in your eyes." (p. 2, letter from Lewis to Ella Bradford, dated May 6, 1935).
Little Ella would recall years later how devoted Lewis could be as a father. Once they hiked Mt. Marcy in New York. Back at the car, she burst into tears - she had left her stuffed teddy bear at the top. Lewis hiked all the way back to the top to retrieve it.
But Lewis was not content to be passive in the Rouge plant. Ella recalled, "He could not understand why, as soon as men went through the gate, they seemed to change personality. From being cordial and friendly, they apparently became suspicious and hostile." (p. 8, letter from Ella Bradford, to daughter Helen, March, 1965). Lewis had come from a family of Abolitionists. His parents had met while working in Mississippi with the Methodist Church Freedman's Aid Society, teaching newly freed slaves to read. The Ku Klux Klan surrounded Mrs. Bradford's schoolhouse once and prevented teacher and students from leaving for two weeks. Despite the attacks, they remained in Mississippi for 15 years.
Here at the Rouge, Lewis was determined not to back down.
Harry Bennett-"Closer to Ford than his only son"
Ford and Bennett saw red. Two of the Big Three auto companies, General Motors and Chrysler, had fallen. Henry's only child, Edsel, had sympathies with the workers, and encouraged co-operation and negotiation with the union, but Ford would have none of it. He told Edsel he needed to toughen up - and try to be more like Harry Bennett - Ford was fond of saying, "Bennett knows how to hold himself in an argument." Edsel had been expected to take over the running of the company from Henry Ford, but his father undercut him, and favored Bennett, again and again. Even the most sympathetic biographers of Ford agree that he treated his son cruelly. One of the Ford grandchildren was quoted as saying Ford "killed my father," Edsel. (p. 413, Ford: The Men and the Machine, by Robert Lacey, 1986).
Ford's and Bennett's relationship deepened at this critical juncture during the organizing of the Rouge. The two would meet every day in Bennett's basement office off Schaeffer Road. Bennett boasted that he was "closer to him even than his only son." (p. 5, We Never Called Him Henry, by Harry Bennett, as told to Paul Marcus, 1951). Ford entrusted important business decisions to him. Also, when Ford had inappropriate relationships with servant girls, it was Bennett's job to cover up so no one would know. There was one place all Ford executives knew where to find Ford: Bennett's office. Bennett was expected by many to
become the next head of the Ford Motor Company.
I spoke with Victor Reuther, the famous United Auto Workers organizer, who was interested to hear about Bradford. He's over 90 now, but he remembers to the 1/2-cent what women workers were making at Kelsey Wheel in November 1936. After I described Lewis Bradford and how he was killed by thugs under Harry Bennett, Victor said slowly, and under his breath, "There were others. My brother Walter and I were victims of assassination attempts by the same people. . . We lost many good organizers picked off by Harry Bennett's thugs." (Telephone interview with Victor Reuther, June 7, 2001).
The Battle of the Overpass
In April, 1937, the Supreme Court upheld the validity of the Wagner Act, guaranteeing workers the rights to organize a union. Walter Reuther and other organizers saw their chance, and Ford would not be able to stop them. On May 26, 1937, they assembled a hundred leafletters, and invited over a hundred clergy, press and politicians, "So there won't be any trouble."
However, over 400 Ford Servicemen under Harry Bennett appeared as the leafleting began and proceeded to viciously beat the organizers, both men and women. One minister noted that the Dearborn police looked on as one woman was being beaten, and made no attempt to stop the carnage. Katherine "Bebe" Gelles, head of the Local 174 auxiliary, traded punches with a goon. The thugs went too far, commentators said. At least one organizer - JJ Kennedy - died of his wounds. Tony Marinovich suffered a fractured skull which he never fully recovered from. But the biggest mistake made by the company was beating up the press, including photographers from the Detroit News. Most of the film was seized by the thugs, but one photographer got away. Walter Reuther and Dick Frankensteen had their bloody faces broadcast around the world. The photographs told the story of what came to be called the Battle of the Overpass. Time's coverage was particularly graphic, and in response Ford withdrew all ads from Time, Life and Fortune for the next 70 weeks.
WJ Cameron, Henry Ford's assistant, reported on his Sunday radio broadcast that it was merely a case of Ford against the "Reds," and that this was no time to be "timid."
The Battle of the Overpass took its toll on Edsel - the relationship of Henry and his son Edsel never recovered. The organizers that were being beaten and murdered were intellectuals, idealists - the same sort of folks Edsel socialized with. Clara Ford sided with Edsel, but it was clear Henry was firm in his decision - Bennett, and no one else, would rule on all matters relating to labor at the Ford Motor Company.
Clara Ford had mutual friends with the Bradfords in Dr. Sladen, the head of the Henry Ford Hospital, and personal physician to the Ford family. In June, a month after the Battle of the Overpass, the Bradford's son Curtis graduated with a PhD from Yale University. The Bradfords were unable to get to New Haven, but Dr. Sladen attended and wrote them a letter, "The accomplishment that he has completed is worthy of the greatest praise, and I tried my best to represent the family in the amount of noise I made when his diploma was awarded." (Letter from Dr. Frank J. Sladen, Physician-in-Chief at the Henry Ford Hospital, to Mrs. Lewis Bradford, July 8, 1937).
Layoffs and Intimidation
In September 1937, 75,000 of the 87,000 workers at the Rouge were laid off. Labor charged that the layoffs were a ploy to break the momentum built up by the massive surge of strikes and labor organizing, and as a message to workers: See what happens to jobs when the union comes to town.
The eyes of the world were focused on Detroit. There was change in the air. City council elections were coming - and there were 5 labor candidates, including Maurice Sugar, Walter Reuther and others alleged to be Communists or Socialists. The fledgling auto workers union showed its strength in the October runoffs - all 5 candidates did well, building on a broad labor-liberal-black consituency. The New York Times proclaimed them "sure winners." Walter Reuther declared that labor would "put its best picket captain" in the job of Chief of Police. (p. 88, Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit, by Nelson Lichtenstein, 1995).
Through this time, Father Coughlin became more controversial, and along with Henry Ford, more openly supportive of Hitler. He was unable to raise the huge amounts of money through his broadcasts, perhaps because of his increasingly shrill tone, and began to receive large amounts of money from Ford. (p. 330, Radio Priest: Charles Coughlin, The Father of Hate Radio by Donald Warren, 1996).
As the November, 1937 elections approached, Coughlin became more strident. On October 3, 1937 in a radio broadcast he asked: "Do you want Detroit run by Labor Tyranny?" and suggested the Communists will take over. At the same time, Coughlin was working closely with Harry Bennett on several schemes to stop the UAW and bring in a company union at the Rouge. (p. 147, Radio Priest: Charles Coughlin, The Father of Hate Radio by Donald Warren, 1996).
Bradford's radio show got more outspoken - he had transformed at this point, and rather than achieving a dream of transforming Ford Motor Company by bringing labor and management together, was being threatened himself. He formed a group called the League of One Thousand Men.
The anti-communist hysteria crescendoed - Ford, Coughlin and Bennett worked together on a successful get-out-the-vote campaign. On election day, voter turnout was doubled over turnouts in previous years. All five labor candidates lost the election.
Ford was victorious - Bennett was victorious - they were determined to stall the National Labor Relations Board both on a legal front - and continue the illegal activities in the plant. They vowed to wait until 1940. The NLRB was seen as a creation of Roosevelt - and in 1940 they could use the same money, and the same tactics used in the Detroit elections, to win the presidency back from Roosevelt.
The campaign of intimidation was set to continue. A New York Times article of January 23, 1938, reported that in the previous six weeks, there had been 900 arrests of union leafletters in the city of Dearborn. (p.398, The Legend of Henry Ford, by Keith Sward, 1948).
Muriel Lester Tries to Speak with Henry Ford, November 1937
Just after the city elections, Muriel Lester, a Socialist from England, and founder of the Fellowship of Reconciliation - came to Detroit to hold meetings. She had been in China during the infamous Rape of Nanking the previous summer. She was traveling the world to bring attention to atrocities committed by the Japanese. Lester was now on her way to Tokyo. She commented at the time, "I shall try to make Americans see their own share of the guilt. They are making large profits out of supplying the means of death and torture." (p. 163 Mother of World Peace; The Life of Muriel Lester, by Jill Wallis, 1993).
It's not clear that Henry Ford was aware of Muriel Lester's attempt to communicate. However, the very next month, the New York Times of December 28, 1937, reported that Ford's chief agent in the Far East just invested 1,000,000 yen in Japanese war bonds. (p. 457, The Legend of Henry Ford, by Keith Sward, 1948). Was this a not-so-subtle response to Lester?
Ella would write later that Lester represented all that Ford and Bennett feared, and had been fighting the previous year. Ella and Lewis had an interview with Muriel Lester at the end of November, 1937. Lester was late. She said, I was trying to arrange to speak with Henry Ford, with no luck. Bradford said he knew people in the front office, and spent the better part of an afternoon trying to set up a meeting between Henry Ford and Lester. "This was a f
atal mistake," Ella wrote.
Ella received a threatening call at 1:30 a.m. that same night. Almost paralyzed with fear, Ella waited for Lewis to come, feeling that he might never arrive. When he did, Ella told him of the call. Lewis said there was nothing to do about it except forget it.
Lewis is Attacked
Two days later, on November 27, 1937, Lewis was attacked inside the Rouge plant.
Ella took her two daughters, Little Ella and Helen, and went to the Henry Ford Hospital. Lewis was unconscious. Dr. Sladen wheeled Bradford into the X-ray room, and told Ella he wanted to know everything about the case.
I contacted Dr. Frank Sladen's son, who is now 80. He recalled his dad's close relationship with the Ford family. The son recalled how his father hoped he would go into medicine, but the son lost a leg in the war, and decided to go into education. "I wanted to teach people a better way to handle arguments. Dad didn't understand." His father spoke of Harry Bennett, "a brutal man," who had spies even in the Henry Ford Hospital. Dr. Sladen was careful not to speak against Ford - he learned you got "sat on." (Phone Interview with Frank Sladen, Jr., June 11, 2001).
Allen Brett and his daughter Mary were close by, and helped constantly, staying by Ella's side at the hospital and having the family over for dinner.
I located Mary Brett in Philadelphia. She was Little Ella's best friend. She shared how her father had an idealistic nature like Bradford. When Lewis was in the hospital, she recalls how she and Little Ella would stay up late, coloring in their coloring books - "It was a way to cope with the terribleness." (Phone Interview with Mary Daniels (nee Brett), September 11, 2001).
Lewis Dies; The Foreman Claims His Death an "Accident"
Bradford spent three days in a coma, and died, never speaking another word to Ella. Ella is told he received a "cleverly placed blow to the head," with no outward sign of injury.
The workers at the Rouge glass plant, where Bradford had worked, made sure that Ella never went alone to the factory. They also took up a collection, and gave Ella $80, almost all of it in coin, and told her, "The boys at the glass-house wanted you to have this." Ella broke down completely. "I knew that it was a love offering which some of them could ill afford." (p. 3, Autobiographical Sketch written by Ella Bradford, given to Dr. Francis P. Jones, 1961). One worker shared that, "I was always a better man after I talked with Brad."
The foreman came to see the widow, bringing with him a 3-year old boy "as a screen". He said he saw Lewis hit his head upon the floor. "Did Lewis ever have fainting spells?" He added, "Everybody's gotta die some time." The foreman was very nervous as he spoke with her. "I had all I could do to keep from screaming at him hysterically, and tell him he was lying and he knew it." (p. 3, letter from Ella Bradford to daughter Helen, March, 1965).
The family knew from Dr. Sladen's comments that Bradford's injuries were not consistent with an accidental fall. However, the family never saw an autopsy report.
Locating the Autopsy in 2001
In April 2001, I contacted the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office. Cassandra Lee told me, "Yes, we could search for a record - but 1937? That could be real tough." She searched for two months. Then I got the call in early June. "We found the autopsy." I was almost breathless. She read from the report, "Multiple stellate fractures at the base of the skull, and multiple stellate fractures along the convex portion of the skull." I spoke with Dr. Carl Schmidt, Forensic Pathologist for Wayne County. It was clear to him what was in the autopsy report and he told me, "This was no accident - this was a homicide that was never investigated. . . There's no way in hell that he fell." (Phone Interview with Dr. Carl Schmidt, Forensic Pathologist for the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office, June 22, 2001).
A City Mourns
Three funeral services were held for Bradford. One was at the Howard Street Mission. One was held at Central Church - in the church bulletin was the note, "Flowers at the altar are provided by Mrs. Edsel Ford." (Church Bulletin, Central Methodist Church, December 5, 1937). Yet the Ford family didn't worship at the Central Church. And a third service was held at the River Rouge plant. Ella did not want to go, but workers insisted. "A completely strange man whom I had never seen before pushed in between me and my friends and took the seat beside me. You can imagine the tension I felt. After the service, I turned, extended my hand, and said, 'I don't believe I have met you.' He was quite uneasy, but said, No, he was a stranger, he was just going through, and saw the crowd so decided to see what was going on. Why did he have to intrude among the relatives of the one for whom the service was being held?" (p. 8, letter from Ella Bradford to daughter Helen, March, 1965).
Lewis's widow and her children left Detroit, never to return. Sixty-six years later, there are grandchildren and great-grandchildren and others who know Lewis's story and keep it alive. Lewis Bradford is not forgotten.
However, questions remain.
Who Knew?
The Ford family physician and the family of the Ford family pastor, Bishop Charles D. Williams, knew the Bradford family well, and knew the circumstances of Bradford's murder. Did Clara Ford have awareness of Bradford's murder? If so, how did it affect her? Did Henry Ford have awareness of the murder?
More than 60 years later, maybe it's too late to ask these questions. Some answers aren't around any more. Witnesses are gone. Bennett was fired from the Ford Motor Company in 1945, soon after Henry Ford II took over from his ailing grandfather Henry. Bennett spent an afternoon burning all the files he kept on workers. He was determined to leave no paper trail. (p. 318, Maurice Sugar: Law, Labor, and the Left in Detroit, 1912-1950, by Christopher Johnson, 1988).
Lewis Bradford has been all but erased from the Ford Motor Company. Repeated attempts to get information have turned up little. There is a public file Ford Motor Company has on industrial accidents of 1937 - Bradford is missing from that file. However, Dr. Schmidt wondered, "Could there have been some investigation by Dearborn Police?" He called the Dearborn Police Department. They apologized, but they couldn't help in the search. There are no Dearborn Police Department records of any kind going back before 1946.
UAW Wins at Ford; Clara's Role
In 1941, after years of struggle the UAW was on the verge of winning a contract at the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford declared he would shut down all the plants worldwide before he would sign with the union. Clara threatened to divorce him if he didn't sign, and the next day he signed the most far-reaching union contract ever in the auto industry. (p. 169, The Fords: An American Epic, by David Horowitz, 1987). Today, Local 600 at the River Rouge plant is a strong militant local of the United Auto Workers Union with a fighting tradition.
Two Americas
06-04-2009, 03:47 PM
American Labor's Untold Story
"Which Side Are You On, Boys?"
Years ago I read a book entitled Labor's Untold Story by Richard O. Buyer and Herbert Morais. It should be required reading for anyone wanting to understand American labor history and appreciate the huge sacrifices made for us by so many brave and disenfranchised workers and union organizers. The rights we now take for granted did not spring easily forth from a beneficent government. They had to be fought for. Capital was ruthlessly opposed to them. It was indifferent to the plight of those they exploited. It believed that its profits depended on continued exploitation.
Capital is still ready to abuse its power and run roughshod over those it employs. Perhaps, reading about these struggles from 1880 to 1942 here, will allow us to see that we, too, must pick sides and struggle to achieve such basic human rights as decent wages, safe working conditions, reasonable job security. retirement benefits, affordable education and universal health care. If capital says that these goals are too expensive, tell them that too much money is wasted by paying CEOs tens of millions of dollars in salaries and fraudulent bonuses. Tell them to stop the insane $3 TRILLION WAR in Iraq and spend the savings here at home. Have them understand the vast human potential this would release for constructive, rather than destructive purposes Make them see that their biggest market is American workers and their families. If American workers are not paid reasonably, a Depression will surely lie ahead.
"Which Side Are You On." by Florence Reese
Come all of you good workers
Good news to you I'll tell
Of how that good old union
Has come in here to dwell
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Our father was a union man.
Some day ill be one too.
The bosses fired daddy
What's a family gonna do?
(Chorus)
My daddy was a miner
And I'm a miner's son
And I'll stick with the union
Till every battle's won
(Chorus)
They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there
You'll either be a union man
Or a thug for J.H. Blair
(Chorus)
Oh, workers can you stand it?
Oh, tell me how you can
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?
(Chorus)
Don't scab for the bosses
Don't listen to their lies
Us poor folks haven't got a chance
Unless we organize
(Chorus)
Flint GM sit-down strike
UAW had only been formed in 1935. As Wyndham Mortimer, the UAW officer put in charge of the organizing campaign in Flint, recalled, when he visited Flint in 1936 he received a telephone call within a few minutes of checking into his hotel from an anonymous caller telling him to get back where he came from if he didn't "want to be carried out in a wooden box."
The Union kept up a regular supply of food to the strikers inside while sympathizers marched in support outside.A state court judge issued an injunction ordering the strikers to leave the plant. The UAW discovered, through investigative work, that the judge held roughly $200,000 in GM stock, which disqualified him from hearing any case involving GM.
The Flint police attempted to enter the plant on January 11, 1937. The strikers inside the plant turned the fire hoses on the police while pelting them with hinges and other auto parts as members of the women's auxiliary broke windows in the plant to give strikers some relief from the tear gas the police were using against them. The police made several charges, but withdrew after six hours.
GM obtained a second injunction against the strike on February 1, 1937. The union not only ignored the order, but spread the strike to Chevrolet Plant # 4.
GM caved in. In a one page agreement they recognized the UAW as the exclusive bargaining representative for GM's employees who were members of the union for the next six months. As short as this agreement was it gave the UAW instant legitimacy.[2] The UAW capitalized on that opportunity, signing up 100,000 GM employees and building the Union's strength through grievance strikes at GM plants throughout the country. In the next year the UAW saw its membership grow from 30,000 to 500,000 members.
Ford Hunger March - March 7, 1932
The march began on Detroit's East Side and proceeded 10 miles seeking relief during the Great Depression. Facing hunger and evictions, workers had formed neighborhood Unemployed Councils. Along the route, the marchers were given good wishes from Detroit Mayor Frank Murphy as well as two motorcycle escorts, and thousands joined the marchers along the route.
At the Detroit city limit, the marchers were met by Dearborn police and doused by fire hoses. Despite the cold weather, they continued to the Employment Office of the Ford River Rouge plant, from which there had been massive layoffs. Five workers were killed and nineteen wounded by police and company "security" armed with pistols, rifles and a machine gun.
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1932 Ford Massacre
Henry Ford hated unions. So, in 1914, he introduced a $5 daily minimum wage before it's time elsewhere. But he also used spies and intimidation. Ford employed the world's largest company private police force. They were ex-convicts, gangsters, wrestlers and prize fighters.
In 1932, thousands of unemployed Ford workers marched peacefully march on the carmaker's Dearborn plant, only to be machine-gunned by Henry Ford's private army. They start out peacefully, but are met at the gates by Dearborn cops who order them back & fire tear-gas bombs
Members of the crowd begin to throw rocks & pieces of ice. In response the Ford Company fire department now unleashes tons of high-pressure icy cold water on the marchers from fire hoses. The police opened fire with pistols, rifles & machine guns. Four were killed, 25 wounded. Henry Ford fortified his home with machine gun emplacements & stockpiled teargas & ammunition at the Rouge.
1941 Ford workers earned 10 cents/hour less than at GM plants They had no lunch rooms and only a 10-15 minute lunch break.. They were expected to works as needed on weekends, but got no extra over-time or holiday pay. In March 1932, unemployed Ford workers marched on the plant and were fired on by Ford security. Four workers were killed. In 1937, union organizers who went to Gate 4 to distribute union literature were beaten up. The UAW joined with the NAACP and it membership boomed. On March 13, 3000 workers sat down to protest the latest firings of union members. On March 18, 1841, 6000 workers sat down until the company agreed to rehire 12 fired unionists. On March 19, another building struck, and the company gave in. Yet on April 1, Ford refused to meet with a union committee in the rolling mill and fired several union workers. The rolling mill workers stopped production, and the strike spread around the plant. Ford called the Dearborn police and the UAW leadership and asked them to send the workers back to work. The UAW proposed that Ford rehire the fired workers. The company refused. Two hours later the union declared the strike official.
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Ford's Security and 1000 workers stayed in the plant as strikebreakers. They were paid $1 an hour, 24 hours a day. Most were Black-either longtime workers loyal t
o Ford or new workers brought in for the purpose of breaking the strike. But the picket lines showed Black and white solidarity. Tens of thousands of workers joined the picket lines at all the gates. There were daily strike bulletins, hourly press statements and 12 radio broadcasts a day. Ten sound trucks got the message out. The workers parked their cars in huge barricades, blocking all entrances to the plant. The UAW held a rally attended by 16,000-20,000. Promises of support poured in from workers at Chrysler and GM, and from all over the CIO. Homer Martin, a company spy, who posed as the AFL Ford leader, charged that the UAW was communist controlled. There was much fighting. The union said that 153 workers had required hospitalization since the start of the strike and that six were in serious condition.
After one week of the strike, the NLRB ruled that there must be a collective bargaining election within 45 days, a departure from the usual 60 days. But the question remained about reinstating the eight workers whose firings had kicked off the strike. The governor and Murray, head of the CIO, proposed to reinstate five of them and arbitrate the cases of the other three later. Ford agreed that there would be no reprisals against strikers. There was a mass meeting of 20,000 to vote on a settlement. Some opposition arose from those who felt the contract should be won before settling. But the UAW agreed to postpone other complaints until after the union election. The strike was ended and workers went back to work on April 14.
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The UAW had a mass meeting to rally support. Sixty thousand workers and their families crowded into Cadillac Square in Detroit. On May 21, the election was held on union representation. The UAW won overwhelmingly while the AFL got 28 percent of the vote. On June 20, the contract was signed. It provided for the first dues check-off, seniority, and a grievance procedure. It raised wages to correspond to the rest of the auto industry. There was also a clause prohibiting discrimination. For the first time, the UAW won a union shop
http://www.tigersoftware.com/TigerBlogs/Aug-29-2008/index.html
Two Americas
06-04-2009, 03:53 PM
The UAW Made Me
The UAW Made The Middle-Class
Sure, this is a bold claim. Yet it's hard to dispute that the UAW had a greater hand than any other single institution in the creation of what we know as the American middle class. Harold Meyerson wrote a terrific column last week on this very topic:
In its glory days, under the leadership of Walter Reuther, the UAW was the most farsighted institution -- not just the most farsighted union -- in America. "We are the architects of America's future," Reuther told the delegates at the union's 1947 convention, where his supporters won control of what was already the nation's leading union.
Even before he became UAW president, Reuther and a team of brilliant lieutenants would drive the Big Three's top executives crazy by producing a steady stream of proposals for management. In the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor, Reuther, then head of the union's General Motors division, came up with a detailed plan for converting auto plants to defense factories more quickly than the industry's leaders did. At the end of the war, he led a strike at GM with a set of demands that included putting union and public representatives on GM's board.
That proved to be a bridge too far. Instead, by the early 1950s, the UAW had secured a number of contractual innovations -- annual cost-of-living adjustments, for instance -- that set a pattern for the rest of American industry and created the broadly shared prosperity enjoyed by the nation in the 30 years after World War II.
Indeed, it was Reuther's UAW that established the détente between organized labor and capitalists that engendered -- or at least facilitated -- the unprecedented post-war gains in both productivity and household income. By settling the 1950 Big Three contract, which became known as the "Treaty of Detroit," the UAW exacted gains for its members that allowed them to move firmly into a new middle class, with retirement and health security as the cornerstones of the new prosperity. In exchange, big business obtained a sense of relief, as the Treaty of Detroit represented a new, thoroughly American unionist approach to collective bargaining that eschewed the Marxist demand for ownership of the means of production. The right wing extremists who would begin their takeover of the Republican Party twenty years later excoriated the deal as creeping socialism, and Communists pilloried Reuther and the UAW as capitalist lackeys and sellouts. But as the radicals fumed, the nation prospered, and the hardworking men and women of the UAW -- and subsequently, the rest of blue-collar America, both union and non-union -- reaped the benefits of a mature labor peace that saw workers get their piece of the capitalist pie.
There's no question that other unions played a role in the establishment of the postwar peace, but the UAW played the leading role -- both because it bargained with America's biggest corporations, and because of Walter Reuther's charisma and ideological leadership. As a former socialist who spent a couple years in the Soviet Union, Reuther recognized the watershed importance of a labor union at the height of its powers, in the most critical industry in the nation, choosing to broker a mutually advantageous master agreement rather than pressing for gains that might kill the goose who laid the golden eggs. It's true that the building trades, among others, had been negotiating agreements that recognized the permanency of capitalism for decades prior to the Treaty of Detroit, but the leadership of the construction unions had always been fundamentally accepting of the idea of wage labor. Reuther and the UAW came out of a far more radical milieu, and their decision to embrace a sort of American social democracy -- to create an American social contract -- had ripple effects that essentially killed the Marxist left in America. But it also played a massive role in building a broad middle class that enjoyed real security, that didn't survive at the tender mercies of their employers. That was something new in American life, and it persisted for thirty years, give or take.
The UAW Made The Progressive Movement
If the UAW's impact on the sociopolitical scene of the United States was limited to its role in collective bargaining, you could still argue that it played as important a part in the creation of the pragmatic, effective American left as most institutions. Of course, the UAW has done far, far more. Meyerson, again:
During the Reuther years, the UAW also used its resources to incubate every up-and-coming liberal movement in America. It was the UAW that funded the great 1963 March on Washington and provided the first serious financial backing for César Chávez's fledgling farm workers union. The union took a lively interest in the birth of a student movement in the early '60s, providing its conference center in Port Huron, Mich., to a group called Students for a Democratic Society when the group wanted to draft and debate its manifesto. Later that decade, the union provided resources to help the National Organization for Women get off the ground and helped fund the first Earth Day. And for decades after Reuther's death in a 1970 plane crash, the UAW was among the foremost advocates of national health care -- a policy that, had it been enacted, would have saved the Big Three tens of billions of dollars in health insurance expenses, but which the Big Three themselves were until recently too ideologically hidebound to support.
Narrow? Parochial? The UAW not only built the American middle class but helped engender every movement at the center of American liberalism today -- which is one reason that conservatives have always held the union in particular disdain.
From leadership on civil rights, to reform of the Democratic Party, to an early place in the vanguard of real health reform, the UAW has time and again stood out in American labor for its commitment to broad progressivism. The health example is particularly instructive. At a time when many other unions were opposed to national health care, on the grounds that health insurance was a perk of being a union member and that universal care would be a disincentive to unionization, Reuther and the UAW strenuously argued for government insurance. And for the past forty years, the union has been at the forefront of the push to expand Medicare, Medicaid, and to create a single-payer system.
UAW President Ron Gettelfinger often quotes from a 1968 speech by his legendary predecessor Walter Reuther, which is as on point today as it was almost 40 years ago.
"If we are to act realistically and adequately in order to deal with this health care crisis," Reuther said then, "we must first free ourselves of the illusion that we really have a health care system in America. What we have, in fact, is a disorganized, disjointed, antiquated, obsolete nonsystem of health care."
The flaws that Reuther identified in America's approach to health care eventually morphed into the gigantic legacy costs -- about $100 billion just in health care promises to GM, Ford and Chrysler retirees -- that have become such a burden to Detroit's auto industry.
That's unfortunately a common theme in the history of the auto industry -- the UAW sounding a warning that's ignored by the companies, the UAW being proven right, and the UAW subsequently taking the blame for the companies' shortsightedness. The union fought harder than anyone for 40 years to shift health burdens off individual enterprises and on to the government, the Big Three refused to join in the push for national insurance, and now the uni
on is being blamed for the cost of auto industry health insurance. (Hell, the union lost its Canadian affiliates to a schism in the early Eighties, in large part because the Big Three could give the Canadian locals a better deal due to Canadian national health insurance.) Likewise, the UAW takes a lot of blame for Detroit's predilection for gas guzzlers, despite the fact that the union has since the late Forties "suggested that Detroit not put all its bets on bigness, that a substantial share of American consumers would welcome smaller cars that cost less and burned fuel more efficiently."
Perhaps that's the greatest tribute to the UAW's success in building the progressive movement: the union is presumed to be so strong, and so effective, that when it has failed to get the employers to agree with it, the union has unfairly taken the blame.
The UAW Made the Non-Union Auto Plants Decent Places to Work
Much has been made during the bailout debate about the supposed efficiency of the Japanese, Korean and German non-union "transplant" facilities. The transplants, which are primarily concentrated in Southern states with free-rider laws, are lauded as lean operations that still pay their employees a fair wage. And indeed, they are certainly leaner operations than UAW plants, due in large part to their last-mover advantage. And they do pay decent wages. But that's just half the story.
The transplants are located in the South precisely because they have been designed to avoid unionization. Most Southern states have enacted free-rider laws (often known, in an Orwellian twist, as "right to work laws") which require unions selected as bargaining representatives to represent employees who refuse to pay dues. Imagine if citizens of the US could choose whether or not to pay taxes, and non-payers were still entitled to all government services. Imagine how quickly the government would wither and die. That's why unionization is so hard in free-rider states. And that's why Mercedes, and BMW, and Nissan have built nearly all of their plants in the South. (That, and the fact that the transplants have benefited from massive corporate welfare in the form of gigantic tax breaks and property gifts from friendly Southern state governments.)
But the foreign manufacturers know that situating in the South isn't enough to guarantee that the UAW won't successfully organize. To do that, they need to pay their workers enough in base wages -- if not in benefits -- to ensure that the employees aren't dazzled by the prospect of union-won pay increases. Consequently, the non-union auto workers earn only a little less than UAW members, and far more than other non-union manufacturing workers. In short, the non-union auto workers are riding on the coattails of the UAW -- their wages are inflated to stave off the union. If the UAW were busted, all those Nissan workers who love their company and think that the company takes care of them would see their wages slashed overnight. So when Bush tells the UAW that they have to take a pay cut to the non-union transplant rate -- well, in a very real way, the UAW negotiated that rate. It's primarily because of the UAW -- not the good graces of the Japanese and German auto executives who don't pay the health costs in the US that they do in their home countries -- that the non-union auto workers have a decent standard of living.
The UAW Made Me, and Hundreds of Thousands Like Me
My family was one of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, that saw its fortunes dramatically improved by the rise of a powerful UAW. My maternal grandfather was born in the early Twenties to a decidedly working-class Irish-German family in Buffalo. His father hadn't gone to college, and he wouldn't either -- the family wasn't poor, but it didn't have the money to send kids to college. After the war, he came back to Buffalo, and got a job as a die maker at Trico, the world's largest windshield wiper manufacturer.
Fast forward to today. My grandfather is gone -- three packs a day, as well as the lingering effects of too many months in a German stalag, killed him far too early. He died in the late Eighties, just a few years after retiring with a full pension from Trico. But five of his six kids are still with us, and every single one of them went to college (as did my deceased aunt). All six survived childhood relatively healthy. And the grandkids all grew up solidly in the middle class, and headed off to prestigious colleges and grad schools and most are working in white collar jobs and get to travel overseas occasionally and generally are pretty damn bourgie. And that's great. And I know that there are a lot of factors that contributed to my family's upward mobility, including the rise of cheap public universities (since declined) -- but I also know that I wouldn't have had the relatively comfortable life that I now have if it hadn't been for the UAW and its contracts, which provided my mother's family with the security and the income to allow her and her siblings to reach their potential. I wouldn't be who I am, as a person living in formerly-segregated DC, if the UAW hadn't fought for civil rights, and the rights of people of all races to live together as equals. And I wouldn't be able to fight for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act -- and the rebirth of the American labor movement and the American middle class -- had the UAW not created the modern labor movement and the American middle class in the first place.
In short, the UAW made America work the way we want it to work. And while the union has undoubtedly also made mistakes throughout its history, you'd be hard-pressed as progressives to identify an institution that has done more for working Americans of all stripes. So I support an a auto industry bailout, because I'd like to see us help the UAW keep making things: making cars, making a decent and dignified living for its members, and making change for all of us. God knows the union's done a helluva lot more for us than Goldman Sachs.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/12/21/102445/57/589/675734
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