Part 1: Work: 1930-40
Work: 1930- 1940
In 1940, the population dropped slightly to 625, with
adults 64% to 36% children. Adult males still outnumbered adult females
59%-41%. Male children led female children 56%-44%. The number of people
identified as “boarders” dropped to just 3% of the total.
US-born individuals still outnumbered foreign born at 83% of the
total population. Italians were the largest foreign-born group at 7% of the
total, followed by Mexican 4%, other European at 3%, Russian, 2% and German 1%
The Negro population continued to rise; in 1940 Negroes made up 52% of the total population, up from 31% in 1930. Again, the Negro population accounts for the large percentage of US-born individuals listed, with children of US-born parents now outnumbering children of foreign-born parents 57%-43%.
The Negro population continued to rise; in 1940 Negroes made up 52% of the total population, up from 31% in 1930. Again, the Negro population accounts for the large percentage of US-born individuals listed, with children of US-born parents now outnumbering children of foreign-born parents 57%-43%.
The 1940 census lists 35 widows, 13 male and 22 female. As negroes
make up a larger percentage of the population generally, black women make up
the largest percentage of widows in 1940--18% of all adult Negro women were
listed as “widow” in 1940. Over-all, widowed individuals make up 10% of the
adult Negro population, compared to 7% of white adults listed as “widow.”Alice Porter was 32 in 1940, and widowed, living at 332 Market
with her 4 children. If the dates are accurate, she had her eldest child,
Leond, age 15 in 1940, when she was 17 years old. Two other boys followed,
Eugene 12 and Willie, 10, followed by the girl Daisy Mae, age 9.
The 1940 census also lists 14 divorces. 4 males, 10 females, with 8 of the 10 females Negro. Over-all, “divorce” is listed for 5% of adult Negroes, compared to 2% of adult whites.
Lillie May Ward was 23 in 1940, divorced and living at 313 Market with 6 children. The youngest child was Ida Marie, age 1, and the oldest was Carl, age 15. It seems unlikely that Carl could have been the biological child of Lillie May, if her age is listed accurately, nor his younger sister Lucy, age 10. The other children were Richard, 8, Max, 6, and Goodman, 3.
Of the 93 addresses listed in 1940, 87% of the residents were renters and 12% owners. Of the 162 workers, the Tannery was the largest single employer, employing 19% of the Market street workers, followed by general construction 9%, Servants and household workers employed 9%,road construction, 8%, the Johns-Manville plant, 7% followed by various other laborers, railroad workers, janitors and various other odd jobs. The wire mills employed just 3% of Market street residents in 1940.
A more thorough examination on the turbulent Waukegan labor history of the 1930s is warranted. Strike and labor actions continued despite the general economic slowdown. National new deal actions tried to mitigate the worst consequences of the crisis. By late summer of 1933, under new NRA rules, Waukegan and North Chicago industries had added approx.. 2000 jobs, after steep lay-off the year before, with small wage increases included. (1) American Steel and Wire was able to add 400 workers, compared to the previous spring, and Johns-Manville and the Griess-Pflegger tannery workers all saw small increases in their wage rates. (NRA-mandated rates and hours adjustments were designed to employ as many as possible, even if at shorter hours.) (1)
The 1940 census also lists 14 divorces. 4 males, 10 females, with 8 of the 10 females Negro. Over-all, “divorce” is listed for 5% of adult Negroes, compared to 2% of adult whites.
Lillie May Ward was 23 in 1940, divorced and living at 313 Market with 6 children. The youngest child was Ida Marie, age 1, and the oldest was Carl, age 15. It seems unlikely that Carl could have been the biological child of Lillie May, if her age is listed accurately, nor his younger sister Lucy, age 10. The other children were Richard, 8, Max, 6, and Goodman, 3.
Of the 93 addresses listed in 1940, 87% of the residents were renters and 12% owners. Of the 162 workers, the Tannery was the largest single employer, employing 19% of the Market street workers, followed by general construction 9%, Servants and household workers employed 9%,road construction, 8%, the Johns-Manville plant, 7% followed by various other laborers, railroad workers, janitors and various other odd jobs. The wire mills employed just 3% of Market street residents in 1940.
A more thorough examination on the turbulent Waukegan labor history of the 1930s is warranted. Strike and labor actions continued despite the general economic slowdown. National new deal actions tried to mitigate the worst consequences of the crisis. By late summer of 1933, under new NRA rules, Waukegan and North Chicago industries had added approx.. 2000 jobs, after steep lay-off the year before, with small wage increases included. (1) American Steel and Wire was able to add 400 workers, compared to the previous spring, and Johns-Manville and the Griess-Pflegger tannery workers all saw small increases in their wage rates. (NRA-mandated rates and hours adjustments were designed to employ as many as possible, even if at shorter hours.) (1)
Other
strikes included a strike by fuel delivery drivers in the winter of 1935, then
part of the Teamster’s Union (2) and a strike later in 1935 at Johnson Motors
that same year for higher wages and a 40-hour week. (3)
Terminal
Building
The
terminal complex saw its share of troubles in the 1930s. A large fire in 1931
almost completely destroyed one of the buildings, but was subdued by the
sprinkler system and the Waukegan fire department before doing too much damage.
(4)
Charles
Surface, the owner of the Terminal complex, became implicated in an
insurance-fraud scheme in 1934. It was alleged that he had “saddled this tract with mortgages far in
excess of its value. These mortgages were dumped into the security portfolios
of insurance companies,” which were
later “looted” of $1,700,000, by him and others. Meanwhile, the value of the
property had fallen due to his “neglect.” Surface admitted in court that he had
“taken the cure” at a local hospital “to cure the alcohol habit” with funds
from one of the insurance companies. (5) The heads of the insurance companies
involved were convicted, after Surface turned state’s evidence and testified
for the prosecution. (6)
Fansteel
The largest labor action in Waukegan since the 1918 steel strike
was the Fansteel sit-down strike of 1937. This is a strike that would have
national implications.
Fansteel had started in 1907 as Pfantiehl Electric at the Waukegan
Terminal building on the site of the sugar refinery, making various products,
including x-ray coils, and by the mid-1920’s was thriving as as the
Fansteel Radio Co manufacturing car radio chargers among other things. By the
1930s, in a large plant in North Chicago as the Fansteel Metallurgical
Corporation, 200 to 300 were employed, and asking for their newly-formed union
to be recognized. The company flatly refused, despite the provisions of the
Wagner act passed in 1936, which allowed for workers to form unions as well as
established the National Labor Relations Board to mediate disputes between
labor and management. Possibly emboldened by a national wave of sit-down
strikes--900 such strikes between 1936 and 1939, 36 in 1936 alone--workers on February 17, 1937 peacefully shut down two buildings of
the plant and refused to leave. Those who did not wish to participate were
allowed to exit. This new method of striking was seen as more effective means
of putting pressure on companies and preventing the hiring of replacement
workers, with the violence often associated with such practice, (as in the 1918
US Steel strike.) When strikers refused to vacate the buildings, the company
told them they were fired. Fansteel attempted to evict the strikers with the
local sheriff's, but after a pitched two-hour battle were unsuccessful. The
company did turn back on the heat when temperatures reached five degrees and
the February wind blew in through the windows broken during the battle. (7).
The
company and deputies attacked the buildings again in the early morning hours of
Feb 26, this time gaining control and arresting the strikers. While traditional
strikes continued as workers sought recognition of their union, the legal
battle began that would end in the US Supreme court. (The plants re-opened with replacement workers, the company refusing to
rehire those who had participated in the strike.) The strikers appealed to the
Nation Labor Relations Board, the newly-formed federal agency to help mediate
labor disputes and see that the Wagner Act of 1936 allowing union formation was
properly implemented. Not surprisingly, the NLRB was sympathetic to the
striker’s claim that Fansteel had acted illegally in refusing to recognize the
worker’s union, as well as trying to create a company union and infiltrating
the worker union with spies and agitators. Firing of the workers, it was
argued, and refusing to rehire them after the strike was over, was a direct
violation of the Wagner act. The company appealed to the supreme court,
which finally ruled 2 years after the sit-down strike began in February,
1939.The conservative Hughes court generally sided with Fansteel. The strike
had been illegal, according to the court, and Fansteel was under no legal
obligation to rehire the workers, even while conceding that Fansteel had acted
illegally in relation to the Wagner act in refusing to recognize the worker’s
union. Ultimately, Fansteel’s property rights trumped the worker’s union
rights. (8)
The Fansteel decision and others, while complex, had a chilling
effect on sit-down strikes in that era. Many saw the period after Fansteel and
a time of retreat from what many saw as the pro-labor era following the Wagner
act, leading eventually to the Taft-Hartley of 1947, widely seen as restricting
union power.
The Late 1930s
Labor continued
to organize workers in the militant late 1930s, despite the failure of the
Fansteel strike.
The Griess-Pfleger
Tannery was charged in 1937 with unfair labor practices by the National Labor
relations Board for firing 17 employees who had joined a union affiliated with
the CIO. The Tannery, it was charged, apparently fearing the strength of the
national union, “initiated, fostered, actively promoted and otherwise
encouraged the formation of the Waukegan Leather Worker’s Union, an
unaffiliated organization” and that “employees desiring to participate in union
activities were interfered with, coerced and intimidated.” (9) After protracted
negotiations, the company agreed to re-hire 9 of the dismissed workers, with
back pay, and to hold open elections to decide which union the workers
preferred. (10) Just before Christmas, 1937, workers chose the independent
union, not affiliated with the CIO (11), though the national union complained about
the conduct of the vote. (12)
In
the transit sector, a strike in late summer and the fall of 1938 shut down the
electric Chicago North Shore Railroad for 24,000 commuters. The strike had been
called in protest of a proposed 15 percent wage cut, in an almost unanimous
vote (442
to 6) by union members. (13) The strike was called in August and, after
mediation by the US Labor department, (14)
finally settled in early October, with a victory for the workers and a
resumption of their rates at pre-strike levels. (15)
Johns-Manville
Under Brown’s leadership Johns-Manville
gained dominance over the asbestos industry in the US. Consumption of asbestos
rose from a depression low of 85,000 metric tons in 1932 to 750,000 by 1951.
Profits remained strong. By 1937 earnings had risen to $5.4 million, up from
the $1 million loss recorded in 1932, share prices up to $65 from its low of
$10. “There was a temporary, one-year fall-off in sales and profits in 1938,
the year of the so-called Depression II, but sales and profits took off again
as World War II approached.” (16) Brown adorned the cover of Time on April 3,
1939 as a leader and spokesman for US business.
In 1933, Dr. Anthony Lanza, Chief medical director of Met Life Insurance,
advised against hanging asbestos warning signs at Johns-Mansville in Waukegan because
of the “extraordinary
legal situation.” In a letter to the Waukegan plant physician, Lanza admitted
that “One of the difficulties and vexations ... of pneumoconiosis is that
economics as well as production factors, must be balanced against the medical
factors.” (19) Summer
Simpson, president of Raybestos wrote a Johns-Manville attorney in 1935” “The
less said about asbestos, the better off we are.” Brown’s reply a few days
later said, “I agree with you that our interests are best served by having
asbestos receive a minimum of publicity.” (16)
One way of limiting both publicity and liability on the subject of asbestos was to fire workers with long exposures. A study by a federal hygienist in 1938 of asbestos textile workers in North Carolina found approx. 150 older workers of a work force of 540 recently replaced by younger workers “with little or no asbestos experience.” 16)
In 1935, professors Lynch and Smith of the medical college of South Carolina published an autopsy report that began to note the link between asbestosis and lung cancer. Other reports soon followed.(16)
In one of the first challenges to the J-M company’s health policies, 20 former Waukegan employees in 1935 filed a lawsuit claiming injury due to asbestos and other dust in the workplace. The courts ruled against the workers, but the suit seemed to prompt the Illinois legislature to expand occupational diseases in worker’s compensation laws. (17)
In a deposition years later, Hugh Jackson, a manager of industrial health for Johns-Manville, who frequently visited the Waukegan plant, admitted that “many of the jobs at Waukegan were dusty.” As described, “the asbestos would arrive in 100 lb. burlap bags, which along with the silica would be dumped by hand into the machines. There was no proper ventilation and the men would breathe in fibre.” It was difficult, if not impossible to contain the dust within the confines of the plant. Worker carried dust to their homes on their clothes, One physician would later testify that ““once asbestos gets into the home, carried home by workmen, it is there virtually permanently—it gets into rugs, into the carpets, it gets suspended by movement and actually you are getting 24 hour/ day exposure.” (18)
In 1937, Waukegan workers voted overwhelmingly to join the AF of L union for future negotiations with the company. (20) 1936-38 were peak years of labor militancy across the country, with the Fansteel sit-down strike In Waukegan having national implications.
The links between asbestos and lung cancer were we slowly becoming clearer, despite the flawed Sumac study of 1938, funded by the industry, that down-played the connection. By 1942, Dr. William Hueper, first director of the Environmental Cancer Section of the National Cancer Institute, stated that “the evidence linking asbestosis and lung cancer was ‘suggestive’ that asbestos could cause lung cancer.” (16)
Charles Roemer, former chairman of the New Jersey industrial commission, later recalled a lunch in 1942 or 43 with Lewis Brown of Johns-Manville. Brown had called a competing company “a bunch of fools” for notifying employees who had asbestosis.”’’Mr. Brown,’ Roemer asked, ’do you mean to tell me you would let them work until they dropped dead?’ He said, ’Yes, we save a lot of money that way.’” (21/ 16)
(21) Testimony of Charles H. Roemer, Deposition taken April 25, 1984, Johns-Manville Corp., et al. v. the United States of America, U.S. Claims Court Civ. No. 465-83C, cited in (16) Dying for Work: Workers' Safety and Health in Twentieth-Century America (Interdisciplinary Studies in History) Published by Indiana Univ Press (first published February 22nd 1989)
One way of limiting both publicity and liability on the subject of asbestos was to fire workers with long exposures. A study by a federal hygienist in 1938 of asbestos textile workers in North Carolina found approx. 150 older workers of a work force of 540 recently replaced by younger workers “with little or no asbestos experience.” 16)
In 1935, professors Lynch and Smith of the medical college of South Carolina published an autopsy report that began to note the link between asbestosis and lung cancer. Other reports soon followed.(16)
In one of the first challenges to the J-M company’s health policies, 20 former Waukegan employees in 1935 filed a lawsuit claiming injury due to asbestos and other dust in the workplace. The courts ruled against the workers, but the suit seemed to prompt the Illinois legislature to expand occupational diseases in worker’s compensation laws. (17)
In a deposition years later, Hugh Jackson, a manager of industrial health for Johns-Manville, who frequently visited the Waukegan plant, admitted that “many of the jobs at Waukegan were dusty.” As described, “the asbestos would arrive in 100 lb. burlap bags, which along with the silica would be dumped by hand into the machines. There was no proper ventilation and the men would breathe in fibre.” It was difficult, if not impossible to contain the dust within the confines of the plant. Worker carried dust to their homes on their clothes, One physician would later testify that ““once asbestos gets into the home, carried home by workmen, it is there virtually permanently—it gets into rugs, into the carpets, it gets suspended by movement and actually you are getting 24 hour/ day exposure.” (18)
In 1937, Waukegan workers voted overwhelmingly to join the AF of L union for future negotiations with the company. (20) 1936-38 were peak years of labor militancy across the country, with the Fansteel sit-down strike In Waukegan having national implications.
The links between asbestos and lung cancer were we slowly becoming clearer, despite the flawed Sumac study of 1938, funded by the industry, that down-played the connection. By 1942, Dr. William Hueper, first director of the Environmental Cancer Section of the National Cancer Institute, stated that “the evidence linking asbestosis and lung cancer was ‘suggestive’ that asbestos could cause lung cancer.” (16)
Charles Roemer, former chairman of the New Jersey industrial commission, later recalled a lunch in 1942 or 43 with Lewis Brown of Johns-Manville. Brown had called a competing company “a bunch of fools” for notifying employees who had asbestosis.”’’Mr. Brown,’ Roemer asked, ’do you mean to tell me you would let them work until they dropped dead?’ He said, ’Yes, we save a lot of money that way.’” (21/ 16)
Notes
(1) Many More now at work in Waukegan, The Daily
Sentinel, Woodstock, Ill Thu Aug 31, 1933, p1
(2) Waukegan coal famine impends; driver’s strike Chicago tribune, Wed Jan 23,
1935, p14
(3) Strike at factory of Waukegan company Freeport
Journal-Standard, Freeport, Ill, Sat Feb 23, 1935,p1
(4) The McHenry Plaindealer, McHenry, Illinois,
Thurs.June 18, 1931, p1
(5) State’s witness admits plea for a defense
fund Chicago Tribune Sun Jan 14, 1934 p20
(6) Four Insurance co officials guilty The
Decatur Herald, Decatur, Ill Sun Feb 4, 1934, p1
(7)
Fansteel’s Cheifs shun negotiation, says state agent, New York Post, Mon Feb
22, 1937
(8)
The Depression Era Sit-Down Strikes and the Limits of Liberal Labor Law, Ahmed
A. White, scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1040&context=shlr
(9) Charge Unfair labor practice by tanning co
Dixon evening telegraph, Dixon, Ill Thu Nov 4, 1937, p9
(10) Tannery union and company reach accord
Chicago Tribune, Sun Dec 12, 1937, p39
(11) Waukegan tanners reject CIO union Belvedere
Daily Republican, Belvedere, Ill. Fri Dec 24, 1937, p6
(12) Waukegan plant election attacked by CIO
Union Chicago Tribune Sat Dec 25, 1937, p15
(13) Commuters hit by rail strike Salt Lake
Telegraph, Salt Lake City Utah, Tue Aug 16, 1938, p 2
(14) Labor department takes hand in Chicago RR
strike The Gazette and Daily, York, Pennsylvania Wed Aug 17, 1938, p 2
(15) Trolley
strike pact approved Los Angeles Times, Mon Oct 3, 1938, p 7
(16) Dying for Work: Workers' Safety and Health in
Twentieth-Century America (Interdisciplinary Studies in History) Published by
Indiana Univ Press (first published February 22nd 1989)
(17) Asbestos: Medical and legal aspects by
Barry I. Castelman, Stephen L Berger, Aspen publishers, 2005, 894 pages
(18) Defending
the indefensible by Jock McCullouch, Geoffrey Tweedale, OLP Oxford, July
24,2008, 338 pages pages 33-34
(19) The Silence: The Asbestos Industry and
Early Occupational Cancer Research-A Case Study David E. Lilienfeld, MD, MPH,
MS Engin
(20) Johns-Manville employees choose AFL Labor
union Chicago Tribune, Wed Nov 17, 1937, P 14
(21) Testimony of Charles H. Roemer, Deposition taken April 25, 1984,
Johns-Manville Corp., et al. v. the United States of America, U.S. Claims Court
Civ. No. 465-83C, cited in (16) Dying for Work: Workers' Safety and Health in
Twentieth-Century America (Interdisciplinary Studies in History) Published by
Indiana Univ Press (first published February 22nd 1989)
Appendix
(1) Many More
now at work in Waukegan, The Daily Sentinel, Woodstock, Ill Thu Aug 31, 1933,
p1
Many More now at work in Waukegan
Due to the improvement in
the steel business and the national Industrial code, the American Steel &
Wire Company now is carrying a payroll of 1,600 employees in its Waukegan
plant, according to Don Thompson, employment manager for the district, says the
Waukegan News-Sun.
Thompson stated that this
was an increase in employment of 400 men, but from other sources it was learned
that it is better by more than 800 employees than the payrolls last March in
the steel plant.
The men there are now on the
40-hour week, most departments on three shifts, and all of the wages within the
NRA code, although this could not be confirmed through high officials of the
company, who were reluctant and have been, in making public statements on plant
payrolls and employees.
Shorter hours
Some men in the plant stated
that they work from 7 o’clock in the morning until 3 o’clock in the afternoon,
while others related that they begin the work day at 9 o’clock and work until 5
o’clock in the afternoon, indicating that the work day is being switched around
to comply with the NRA code.
The Johns-Manville plant,
located just north of the city limits, was announced as being under the code
last week beginning an advancement in pay of ten per cent. More than 1,000
employees are on the plant payroll, according to the best information possible.
Tannery under NRA
Harry Jordan, superintendent
of the Griess-Pflegger Tanning company stated when his plant went under the NRA
two weeks ago that it would bring a 25 per cent increase in pay to 750
employees in the plant classified as laborers. The Waukegan tannery operated a
54-hour week prior to the adoption of the code for the tanning industry. Other
plants were on a 50-hour a week basis and the Waukegan plant the adoption of
the code paid on a 50-hour week for 45 hours of work, Jordan said at the time.
Employs 800 people
Jordan said today that the
day the plant went on the NRA the personnel was increased to about 750
employees or a 250 increase and that today there are approximately 800 people
on the payroll of the tannery.
Probably the best guess of
the number of men and women added to payrolls since the industries went on the
NRA in Waukegan and North Chicago would be more than 2,000 persons. This figure
can be computed only on few actual figures from a small number of industries
and the best available reports from the other plants.
(2) Waukegan coal famine impends; driver’s strike Chicago tribune, Wed Jan 23,
1935, p14
Waukegan coal famine impends; driver’s strike
Waukegan and North Chicago
faced a miniature coal famine yesterday by reason of the strike of coal drivers
which became effective during the near zero temperatures in the morning. Coal
deliveries were at a virtual standstill, although pickets were not interfering
with deliveries to institutions and homes where there was illness. The strikers
include the fuel truck and wagon drivers
of local 301 of the International Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Stablemen and Helpers’
union, an affiliate of the American Federation of labor. The dispute is over
the union’s demand that drivers be paid for a half day for each fractional half
day they work.
(3)
Strike at factory of Waukegan company Freeport Journal-Standard, Freeport,
Ill, Sat Feb 23, 1935, p1
Strike at factory of Waukegan company
Waukegan, Ill, Feb 23 (AP)
strike pickets appeared at the plant of the Johnson Motor company,
manufacturers of outboard motors, and turned back a number of trucks attempting
to make deliveries. Spokesmen for the workers said wage adjustments and a
40-hour work week were demanded.\
(4) The McHenry Plaindealer, McHenry, Illinois,
Thurs.June 18, 1931, p1
Total destruction by fire of Terminal Building number
seven located on Market Street was averted Thursday morning by firemen who
fought the flames for nearly two hours before subduing them. Total damage, the
greater part of which was caused by water pouring from the sprinkler system,
was estimated at $1,500 by fire chief Sar O’Farrell. The origin of the blaze,
which started on the floor of the Steel Kitchen corporation and burned through
the Champion Folding furniture company below, was not known. Chief O’Farrell
thinks it may have started from oily rags by spontaneous combustion.
(5) State’s witness admits plea for a defense
fund Chicago Tribune Sun Jan 14, 1934 p20
State’s witness admits plea for a defense fund
Quizzed in trial of
insurance case
Charles Surface, who was
given a severance of his trial so that he could testify against seven other
defendants charged with looting the Security Life Insurance company and
affiliated companies of $1,700,000 in assets, yesterday admitted that he had
told some of the defendants that he would go to the state’s attorney if they
did not give him money for a defense in the case.
Surface, the star witness
for the prosecution, was under cross-examination by defense council throughout
the hearing yesterday in the court of Judge Benjamin P Epstein. Questioned by
attorney Harry Olson, Surface told of a visit in March, 1933 to the office of C
Edwin Johnson, vice president of the Security Life Company, who is one of the
defendants on trial.
Admits plea for money
In the office, the witness
said, he found Johnson and two other defendants in the present case, Machir
Dorsey, who formerly controlled the Security Life company and Harrt Tressel, a
vice president of Security Life. Surface admitted that he told the others that
he needed money for his defense.
“Did you demand money?”
attorney Olson asked.
“No, not like that,” Surface
answered.
Q—What did you do? A—I told
them that if they did not give me some money I would go to the state’s
attorney.
Q—Were you promised that you
would be left out of the case entirely in return for your testimony? A—No, I
was told that they would recommend leniency for me.
The examination was then
taken up by defense attorney O W Smth, who questioned Surface concerning the 30
acre tract of land in Waukegan called the manufacturer’s terminal. The
defendants are alleged to have saddled this tract with mortgages far in excess
of its value. These mortgages were dumped into the security portfolios of
insurance companies controlled by Dorsey, according to the state charge.
Shows letters of witness
Attorney Smith produced
letters alleged to have been written by the witness in which Surface praised
the Waukegan property and its great possibilities. Surface admitted that he had
signed the letters.
He also admitted under
questioning by the defense attorney that he had “taken the cure” at Dwight in
February, 1931. He drew $200 from Hult & Co, headed by Edwin Hult, one of
the defendants, to pay for the treatment to cure the alcohol habit, Surface
said.
Defense attorney brought out
the fact that Surface had been in charge of the Waukegan property and intimated
by their questions that the tract had been injured by his neglect. The trial
will be resumed Monday with Surface still under cross-examination by the
defense.
(6) Four Insurance co officials guilty The
Decatur Herald, Decatur, Ill Sun Feb 4, 1934, p1
Four Insurance co officials guilty
Executives convicted of
wrecking two risk concerns
Chicago AP—Four executives
were convicted Saturday of dumping $1,702,000 mortgages on virtually worthless
land into the treasuries of the Security Life and Northern States Life
Insurance companies of Indiana, wrecking the companies.
Two leaders of the alleged
conspiracy were Machir Dorsey of Indianapolis, president, and C Edwin Johnson,
vice president of the security life.
Convicted with them were
Edwin Hult, who formed a company to handle the transfer of the insurance
companies and Harry W Huttig of Muscatine, Ia, whose Waukegan Ill terminal
company was co-owner of the mortgaged industrial tract.
The state contended the 38
acres of land at Waukegan, Ill was worth no more than $150,000, yet bonds to
the extent of nearly two million dollars were floated on the property, handled
through dummy corporations and individuals, and finally found in the assets of
the defunct Life insurance companies. Witnesses testified that part of the
Waukegan plot was even under water on the Lake Michigan shore.
Two of the alleged
conspirators were acquitted.
(7)
Fansteel’s Cheifs shun negotiation, says state agent, New York Post, Mon
Feb 22, 1937
Fansteel’s
Cheifs shun negotiation, says state agent
Sherif
delays new attempt to oust sit-downers in Metal plant
Representatives
ready to ask labor inquiry
Copyright
1937 by the United Press
Waukegan,
Ill, Feb 22 (UP)
A
joint invitation from secretary of labor Frances Perkins and Governor Henry
Horner to rival parties in their Fansteel metallurgical sit-down strike may be
next move to break the deadlock in conciliation efforts, parties close to the
negotiations said today.
He
informant said such a conference would be called on the following conditions:
That
both the company and the striking members of the Amalgamated iron, Steel and
Tin workers either have legal council or not have legal council. The company
has insisted the strikers negotiate for themselves without assistance from
so-called outside professional agitators.
That
no further attempt be made to evict approx. 100 sit-downers in two Fansteel
plant at nearby North Chicago pending the outcome of peace efforts. The
strikers have held the buildings since last Wednesday and on Friday repulsed
140 Sheriff’s men who attempted to oust them.
Miss
Perkins in touch
Robert
Pilkington, United States labor conciliator said his office had supplied Miss
Perkins with reports hourly.
Martin
P Durkin, director of the state department of labor who has been in charge of
mediation efforts between the company and organizers for John L Lewis’
Committee for Industrial Organization left Chicago this morning for Springfield
to give governor Horner a complete report.
Durking,
who made three unsuccessful attempts to get the company officials and the
strikers into conference with the governor said the company apparently doesn’t
want to negotiate.
Robert
J Aichison, Fansteel president, restored heat to the plant last night when the
mercury dropped to 5 above zero. The strikers huddled in blankets as frigid
blasts whistled through hundreds of window panes shattered in Friday’s two-hour
battle of tear gas bombs and missiles.
Patrol
is reduced
Sheiff
L A Doolitttle III since the battle, sent word from his home that no further
attack on the occupied plants was to be made until the situation changed. He
reduced the patrol of police and special deputies at the plant from more than
100 to three eight-hours shifts of ten deputies and four police.
Union
attorney Joseph H Jacobs revealed that an unnamed state representative was
prepared if necessary to ask for a legislative investigation of Fansteel labor
practices.
Max
Swiren, the company’s lawyer, said he was considering some new legal move
following the injunction and eviction writ which the strikers have defied.
The
company still refused to negotiate while the strikers occupy the property.
Mon
Feb 22, 1937
(8)
The Depression Era Sit-Down Strikes and the Limits of Liberal Labor Law, Ahmed
A. White, scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1040&context=shlr
In
the winter of 1936–37, Flint, Michigan, played host to perhaps the most
significant event in the history of American labor. Hundreds of striking
automobile workers seized several factories in a General Motors (GM) production
complex and held them for six weeks despite attempts by local authorities and
GM agents to oust them. In taking control of the factories, the strikers aimed
to force the company to accept their right to form a union of their choice and
to compel GM to recognize and bargain with it, as required by the newly enacted
Wagner Act. GM’s inability to reclaim its factories led to a near-complete
shutdown of its operations nationwide and eventually caused the company to
surrender to the strikers’ main demands. The boldness and tenacity of these
“sit-down” strikers and their unexpected victory over this immensely powerful
and stridently anti-union corporation catalyzed a nationwide wave of hundreds ofsit-down
strikes over the next several months. The strikes would eventually prove
critical to overcoming entrenched employer resistance to basic labor rights and
bringing about, for the first time in American history, extensive unionization
of the industrial workforce. The sit-down strikes represent a tremendously
important chapter in American history.
The
legal legacy of the sit-down strikes is anchored by two decisions of the
Supreme Court of the United States that addressed the strikes’ legality under
labor law. Decided within a few years of the Court’s decision to uphold the
constitutionality of the Wagner Act, NLRB v. Fansteel Metallurgical Corp.6 and
Southern Steamship Co. v. NLRB7 held that sit-down strikes are illegal and that
sit-down strikers may not benefit from the authority of the National Labor
Relations Board (the NLRB or Board) to protect workers from employers’ assaults
on labor rights with the usual remedies of reinstatement and back pay.8 More
subtly, the Court in Fansteel and Southern Steamship also acceded to the
criminal prosecution of sit-down strikers by state and federal officials, as
did the Board in its litigation of these cases. These initial responses to the
sit-down strikes would outline a much broader program of limiting the right to
strike, involving the federal courts, Congress, the Board, and state and local
police and judges. In each of these institutional contexts, the Fansteel and
Southern Steamship cases not only provided a legal foundation on which expanded
attacks on the right to strike could be based, but also tethered to their
analysis the specter of ungoverned labor militancy and the fiction of a Board
and system of labor rights that was (at least until the 1947 enactment of the
Taft-Hartley Act) too tolerant of labor’s excesses.
B.
Sit-Down Strikes in the Second New Deal
In
1936, there were forty-eight sit-down strikes (not counting shipboard strikes)
that lasted at least one day; twenty-two of these, involving almost 35,000
total workers, lasted even longer.37 There were many more sit-down strikes of
the short, quickie type as well.38 Most of these strikes, regardless of their
duration, involved unions affiliated with the CIO (then, the Committee for
Industrial Organizing, and later, the Congress of Industrial Organizations),
which had recently been formed by American Federation of Labor (AFL) dissidents
intent on organizing the industrial workforce.39 Between 1936 and 1939, there
would be almost 600 major sit-down strikes, most of which were, again, mounted
by industrial workers affiliated with the CIO.40 Unlike the 1933 strike at
Hormel, the dominant cause of sitdown strikes in the period of the “Second New
Deal” was the attempt by workers to organize unions in the face of vigorous—and
often vio-lent and criminal—repression at the hands of their employers.41 This
pattern became particularly pronounced in late 1936, just before the Flint
strike erupted.42 That year, sit-down strikes emerged as a powerful and
frequent tactic in the CIO’s struggle to overcome employer resistance in the
rubber industry.43
1.
NLRB v. Fansteel Metallurgical Corp. and Its Aftermath
The
dispute that led to Fansteel began in the summer of 1936, when SWOC undertook
to organize Fansteel Metallurgical Corporation, a relatively small manufacturer
and distributor of rare metals and alloys located in North Chicago,
Illinois.169 In September of that year, Lodge 66 of the union that hosted
SWOC’s organizing efforts, the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin
Workers of North America-CIO, approached Fansteel with a request for
recognition and bargaining.170 Fansteel rejected the union’s request and over
the next several months proceeded to violate the statute in a range of ways
designed to destroy the union: Fansteel proposed and eventually formed a
company union; it refused to bargain with any “outside” union representative;
it reassigned Lodge 66’s president to isolate him from rank-and-file workers;
it hired a labor spy to infiltrate the union; and it repeatedly refused to
recognize or bargain with the union.171 On February 17, 1937, the union, which
by that time commanded a large majority of support, again requested that
Fansteel submit to bargaining.172 Again, the company refused.173 The plant
superintendent, A.J. Anselm, justified the company’s refusal by questioning the
constitutionality of the Wagner Act and surmising that the Supreme Court would
hold it unconstitutional.174 Shortly thereafter, the union “held a meeting and
decided to hold the plant as a protest against [Fansteel’s] refusal to enter
into collective bargaining.”175 That afternoon, ninety-five or so members of
the union then at work seized two buildings at the plant that housed critical
production facilities.176
The
seizure, which immediately shut down Fansteel’s production, was accomplished
peacefully.177 All supervisors, female employees, and workers opposed to the
strike were permitted to leave.178 That evening, the plant superintendent,
accompanied by two police officers and company counsel, approached the
buildings and demanded that the strikers leave; when they refused, the lawyer
informed them that they were fired.179 The next day, Fansteel secured an
injunction from the Circuit Court of Lake County, Illinois, and a writ of
attachment (for arrest of the strikers), which were read to the strikers that
same day.180 The strikers still refused to evacuate the plant.181 The following
morning, February 19, “a large force of deputy sheriffs [about 100] attacked
the building in an effort to dislodge the workers. They used gas bombs, clubs
and a battering ram but were repulsed by the employees,” who threw missiles and
acid down at the police.182 Receiving supplies from co-workers, the strikers
continued to occupy the buildings for another week.183 In the meantime,
Fansteel rejected efforts by the U.S. Department of Labor and the Governor of
Illinois to mediate the standoff.184 On February 26, the company instigated an
effort by a larger force of deputies to recapture the building.185 By attacking
in the early hours with more powerful weapons, the deputies were eventually
able to gain control of the buildings and arrest most of the strikers (a few
apparently made off in the chaos), although only after a “pitched battle.”186 As
the Board confirmed, the strikers abstained from any malicious destruction of
Fansteel’s property during the strike; in fact, like other sit-down strikers,
they even attempted to protect sensitive machinery while they held the
buildings.187 Nevertheless, fighting during the two attempts by police to
retake the buildings, as well as the failure of the heating systems (for which
the company was likely responsible), caused a fair amount of damage to the
buildings and their contents.188 Some four months after the strike,
thirty-seven of the men who had participated in the strike were tried and
convicted of criminal contempt before the Lake County Circuit Court that had
enjoined the strike; twenty-four strikers were fined $100 and sentenced to ten
days in jail, eleven were fined $150 and sentenced to 120 days in jail, and two
were fined $300 and sentenced to 180 days in jail.189 The court reserved the
most severe punishment for two union organizers who were not employees of the
company: Oakley Mills was fined $500 and sentenced to 180 days in jail and
Meyer Adelman, who had been organizing at Fansteel since the previous summer
and coordinated the strike, was fined $1000 and sentenced to 240 days in
jail.190 All of these men would serve out their sentences.191 It was actually
Adelman who, on behalf of Lodge 66, filed unfair labor practice charges against
Fansteel. The initial unfair labor practices charges against Fansteel, which
related entirely to the company’s refusal to recognize and bargain with the
union, were filed in September 1936.192 On May 21, 1937, Adelman filed amended
charges, which pressed a number of other issues.193 Some of these issues
concerned Fansteel’s conduct before and during the sit-down strike, while
others related to its post-strike treatment of the workers.194 In the meantime,
the union continued a conventional strike against Fansteel, punctuated by
several other unsuccessful attempts to get the company to recognize and bargain
with the union.195 For its part, Fansteel resumed operations after the sit-down
strike with crossovers and replacement workers. Moreover, in April 1937, it
finally constituted a full-fledged company union, the Rare Metal Workers of
America, Local 1.196
On
May 26, 1937, the regional director of the NLRB issued a formal complaint
charging Fansteel with numerous violations of the Act, including unlawfully
refusing to recognize and bargain with Lodge 66, committing espionage against
the union, sequestering the union president and forbidding him to speak to
other workers, attempting to dominate Lodge 66, forming a company union,
discharging the sit-down strikers and several who aided them “for the reason of
their membership in the union and that they engaged in concerted activity for
the purpose of collective bargaining and for other mutual aid and protection,”
and later rehiring some of the strikers and their supporters on a
discriminatory basis premised on their willingness to renounce the union or
their rights under the statute.197 Fansteel denied all of these accusations, stressing
that its discharges of the sit-down strikers were justified by the illegal and
violent nature of the strike.198
In
September 1937, the trial examiner assigned to the case released his ruling in
the form of an Intermediate Report. Based on testimony from 116 witnesses and
numerous documents, the report came only after the trial examiner overcame
several dilatory tactics by Fansteel, including an attempt to enjoin the
proceedings on the ground that the matter was then pending before the Illinois
Circuit Court in the form of the criminal contempt proceedings.199 The report
methodically confirmed every unfair labor practice lodged against Fansteel by
the regional director.200 The report directed that Fansteel recognize and
bargain with Lodge 66, cease and desist from its efforts to form a company
union, and offer reinstatement and back-pay to all but a handful of employees
whose discharge the trial examiner considered justified by reasons not related
to the strike.201 On the key question of how to deal with the sit-down
strikers, the trial examiner rejected Fansteel’s reference to the strike as
justification for discharging the strikers, noting, first, that the strike had
been provoked by Fansteel and, second, that any claim that strike participation
gave Fansteel cause to discharge the strikers was negated by the fact that the
company either reinstated or offered reinstatement to scores of strike
participants—in each case with the implicit condition that they abandon the
strike and renounce the union.202
Both
Fansteel and the union appealed the trial examiner’s ruling to the Board. While
the union’s exceptions were minor, Fans-teel’s were “voluminous.”203 With one
important exception, the Board upheld all of the trial examiner’s
determinations. The Board rejected the trial examiner’s conclusion that the
discharges of the sitdown strikers and the company’s refusal to offer them
unconditional reinstatement were, in themselves, violations of the
antidiscrimination provision of the Wagner Act.204 In the Board’s view, the
sit-down strikers were never actually discharged during or after the strike.205
Moreover, while most of the strikers remained off the job, this was not because
they had been discharged or denied reinstatement; rather, it was because they
were still out on strike.206 Although the Board considered it likely that
Fansteel would have denied reinstatement to the strikers had they applied “in a
body,” this had not yet occurred and therefore could not be the basis of a
claim of unlawful discrimination.207 The Board agreed with the trial examiner
that the pattern of unfair labor practices warranted a remedy that would
“restore as fully as possible the situation that existed prior to the
respondent’s unlawful conduct.”208 This meant, among other things, the
collective reinstatement of the strikers. That they had engaged in the sit-down
strike was no defense for Fansteel, the Board held, for two reasons. First, the
Board emphasized that Fansteel “does not come before the Board with clean
hands” because its “gross violations of the law . . . were the moving cause” of
the sit-down strike.209 Anticipating an argument it would make before the
Supreme Court, the Board went even further, suggesting that the statutory duty
imposed on employers to recognize and bargain with a union, which Fansteel
systematically flouted, was conceived precisely to prevent the kind of intense
labor conflict that came about in this case.210 Second, the Board confronted
the company’s claim that the criminal nature of the strike deprived it of the
power to order the strikers’ reinstatement, regardless of whether they had been
discharged or not.211 On this point, the Board’s unwillingness to find that the
strikers had been discharged reveals its significance. If the strikers had
never actually been discharged for their participation in the sit-down strike,
they remained unequivocal employees under the Act and potential beneficiaries
of the Board’s remedial authority— without the Board having to show that the
discharges themselves were unlawful or engage the unsettled issue of whether a
discharge would terminate employee status under the Act.212 Moreover, this
reading of events forced the company to argue that this strike barred
reinstatement as a remedy for other violations of the Act, not simply that it
was adequate grounds to discharge. The Board focused on the issue of Fansteel’s
unclean hands, holding that the company should not escape legal consequences
when its own unlawful conduct was so egregious that it provoked an illegal
response from its employees.213 In such a circumstance, the Board reasoned, its
prerogative to fashion remedies to advance the aims of the Act clearly trumped
Fansteel’s post hoc rationalizations.214 The Board went a step further on this
issue, stressing that it did not automatically discount strikers’ criminal
behavior in deciding whether to order their reinstatement and citing several
cases involving serious felonies in which it had, in fact, rejected that
remedy.215 The Board’s purpose in mentioning this consideration was to show
that it weighed all the equities and found reinstatement, among other, less
controversial remedies, essential to effectuating the Act.
Fansteel
appealed the Board’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh
Circuit. Although the court deferred to the Board’s conclusion about Fansteel’s
use of a labor spy and its support for a company union, it overturned the Board
on every other issue.216At the center of the court’s reasoning was its
unqualified view that sitdown strikes were illegal, that Fansteel discharged
the strikers and their supporters because of this, and that the discharges were
there- fore justified.217 Accordingly, Fansteel could have no duty to bargain
with the strikers on that day or any subsequent day, as the discharges left the
union without majority support in Fansteel’s workforce.218 Moreover, the court
held, the discharged workers thereby lost their status as employees under the
Act and were no longer entitled to the rights it conveyed.219 Though largely
built around arguments for deference to the Board,220 the dissenting judge’s
opinion effectively laid bare the real policy questions before the court.
First, referring to the majority’s claim that a decision to uphold the Board
would constitute “an approval of the unlawful acts of the employees,”221 Judge
Treanor retorted that “it is as meaningless as would be the contention that a
reversal of the order of the Board constitutes an approval of the [employer’s]
unlawful defiance of the National Labor Relations Act [NLRA].”222 Treanor also
noted that while the sit-down strikers may have been in the wrong, “it is
obvious that they did not make a greater mistake as to the law than did the
petitioner and its advisors who believed that the petitioner could rightfully
refuse to bargain collectively with the agent of the employees on the ground
that the National Labor Relations Act was unconstitutional.”22
The
Supreme Court did not hear arguments in Fansteel until January 1939 and did not
decide the case until February 27 of that year—two years and one day after the
police recaptured the plant.224 As is normal in the progression of a case from
an administrative agency to the Supreme Court, the Court’s decision distilled
both factual and legal questions to a minimal set of issues. In this instance
though, the process served to prejudge the dispute. In the view of Chief
Justice Charles Evans Hughes, who wrote the majority opinion, the case
presented only one important question: whether the Board had the authority to
order the reinstatement of the sit-down strikers.225 For Chief Justice Hughes,
the issue was simply a matter of whether the Board would be allowed to endorse
employees’ criminal behavior at the expense of employers’ property rights and
business prerogatives. Even more explicitly and tersely than the Court of
Appeals, Chief Justice Hughes deferred to the Board’s findings regarding unfair
labor practices that occurred prior to the commencement of the sit-down
strike.226 Turning to the central issue, Chief Justice Hughes then quickly
showed his hand. Noting that the Board had changed its position on whether the
employer’s statements to the strikers constituted a genuine mass discharge, but
without engaging the reasons for the shift, Chief Justice Hughes declared the
“discharge was clearly proven.”227 Moreover, he deemed the discharges
thoroughly justified by the sit-down strike: “[I]t was a high-handed proceeding
without shadow of legal right” that gave “good cause” for the strikers’
discharge unless this was otherwise prevented by the Wagner Act.228 On this
question, Chief Justice Hughes was equally strident. While he conceded that
Fansteel had violated the labor law, he held “there is no ground for saying
that it made respondent an outlaw or deprived it of its legal rights to the
possession and protection of its property.”229 In Chief Justice Hughes’ view,
this fact gave Fansteel “its normal rights of redress,” which includes “the
right to discharge wrongdoers from its employ.”230 To the Board’s
claim—supported by the broad wording of the relevant provisions—that the
strikers nonetheless remained employees under the Wagner Act and were thereby
entitled to benefit from the Board’s remedial powers, Chief Justice Hughes said
simply that “[w]e are unable to conclude that Congress intended to compel
employers to retain persons in their employ regardless of their unlawful
conduct.”231 Chief Justice Hughes provided a similar response to the Board’s
alternative claim that the provision of the statute granting its remedial
authority—section 10(c), which broadly accorded the Board the power to adopt
remedies that effectuate the aims of the Act—allowed it to order the strikers’
reinstatement even if they were no longer statutory employees.232 Purporting to
affirm the Wagner Act’s fundamental purpose in advancing basic labor rights of
self-organization and collective bargaining, Chief Justice Hughes resorted to
formalism: “There is not a line in the statute to warrant the conclusion that
it is in any part of the policies of the Act to encourage employees to resort
to force and violence in defiance of the law of the land.”233
This
brusque, even imperious, rejection of the Board’s case was reflected even more
clearly in the way the Court assessed the employer’s rehiring campaign after
the sit-down strike. As the Board saw it, Fansteel’s practice of conditionally
rehiring some of the strikers not only demonstrated the falsity of the
employer’s assertion that it discharged the sit-down strikers (if this occurred
at all) because of their misconduct during that episode, it also constituted
another violation of the statute: an attempt by the employer to condition
reemployment on renunciation of union support and the right to strike.234 Chief
Justice Hughes dismissed this argument by simply taking for granted Fansteel’s
claim—which had been explicitly refuted by the regional director, the trial
examiner, and the Board—that it only offered reinstatement to employees whom
the union had forced to participate in the strike.235 Beyond this, Chief
Justice Hughes merely appealed to an employer’s supposedly inherent right to
decide whom it employs.236 Chief Justice Hughes concluded his opinion by
invoking similar reasoning to deny the Board the power to reinstate those
employees who supported the sit-down strikers.237 The Court then rejected the
Board’s attempt to order Fansteel to recognize and bargain with Local 66,
holding that the valid discharge of the sit-down strikers had sufficiently
changed the union’s circumstances to absolve Fansteel of any such obligation,238
and noting that the Board could order an elec- tion instead.239 Finally, in a
meaningless concession to the Board and the union, Chief Justice Hughes upheld
the Board’s determination that the Rare Metal Workers Union was an unlawful
company union.240 Chief Justice Hughes’ opinion was not joined by all of his
colleagues on the Court.241 Justice Reed, joined by Justice Black, dissented on
the question of reinstatement, taking the majority to task for inflexibly
construing the “lawlessness” of the sit-down strikers as necessarily
determinative of the limits of the Board’s authority.242 In Justice Reed’s
view, the Wagner Act very clearly charged the Board with effectuating its goal
of industrial peace obtained via a functional system of labor rights.243 In
this respect, the Board acted reasonably and appropriately in dealing with a
dispute in which both sides “had erred grievously in their respective
conduct.”244 Under such circumstances, Justice Reed concluded, it was simply
not appropriate for the Court to second-guess the Board’s solution.245
Chief
Justice Hughes’s opinion in Fansteel is a resounding reaffirmation of the
Court’s adherence to traditional notions of private property, social order, and
workplace authority after the tumult and uncertainty of the previous years. In
Fansteel, Chief Justice Hughes, who in the preceding years had authored the
lead opinions in both Schechter Poultry and Jones & Laughlin, made clear
that the New Deal did not fundamentally alter the relationship between labor rights
and property rights. Rather, as Pope describes it, Fansteel verified that “the
employer could violate the workers’ statutory rights without sacrificing its
property rights, while the workers could not violate the employer’s property
rights without sacrificing their statutory rights— a return to the hierarchy of
values that predated the Wagner Act.”246 To this it might be added that the
decision also subordinated the Act (and the Board as well) to a comprehensive
ideology of order and authority that recognized the right of employers, but not
workers, to resort to illegal acts of self help. Similarly, for Klare, Fansteel
embodied the restoration of legal formalism in labor law jurisprudence, a
perspective that would secure the elevation of often reactionary legal
doctrines, such as Chief Justice Hughes’s appeal to property rights, over a
view of labor rights focused on the textured realities of labor relations.247
By all of these means, Fansteel helped frame a jurisprudence that broadly
repudiated the Wagner Act’s more reformist tendencies and, still more broadly,
made clear the limits of the New Deal as a whole.248
In
reaction to Fansteel, employers fired hundreds of workers.249 They also began
to defend themselves against Board reinstatement orders by arguing that the
workers in question had engaged in sitdown strikes.250 In more than a few
cases, the Board found itself compelled by the black letter of Fansteel to deny
reinstatement.251 Nevertheless, under the leadership of Chairman J. Warren
Madden, the Board continued to search for ways to reconcile Fansteel with the
implementation of a meaningful system of labor rights in a climate of vigorous
employer opposition.252 Accordingly, in quite a number of cases, the Board
rejected the employer’s claim that a sit-down strike had occurred, finding the
claim either pretextual or a circumstance outside the definition of
Fansteel.253 In other cases, the Board continued to order reinstatement when
the strikers left peacefully when instructed by the police or when the employer
rehired some of the strikers in a discriminatory fashion.254 Nevertheless, this
fundamentally realistic approach to the issue did not always receive the
approval of courts, which occasionally declined to enforce reinstatement orders
in such cases.255
Militant
unionists achieved an important victory before the courts that ran counter to
the spirit of Fansteel in late 1939 when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Third Circuit upheld a Board decision ordering Republic Steel to reinstate
strikers implicated in serious violence.256 In Republic Steel, a case arising
out of the 1937 Little Steel strike, the Board refused to account for
allegations of criminality or violence not backed by guilty pleas or
convictions.257 Stressing the company’s provocation of the strike and the fact
that it was manifestly “guilty of brutal acts of violence” far more serious
than those of the strikers, the Board ordered the reinstatement of strikers who
had been convicted of crimes of violence, excepting only those convicted of
serious felonies.258 Although it followed other courts and rejected the Board’s
attempts to reinstate some strikers who were guilty of serious misdemeanors,
the Third Circuit’s decision upheld the Board’s reinstatement of the other
strikers.259…
Although
Fansteel contributed to a reduction in the frequency of sit-down strikes—which
by 1939 was already down compared with the preceding two years—the decision did
not stop such strikes entirely.261 Quickie sit-downs, usually arising as
unplanned, wildcat strikes, continued to occur for years after Fansteel.262 On
quite a few occasions, such strikes resembled the signature sit-downs of a few
years earlier in scale, if not duration. In early 1941, for example, CIO
members joined independent unionists and used a sit-down strike to briefly
close an International Harvester plant in East Moline, Illinois.263 Around the
same time, SWOC unionists engaged in sit-downs at Bethlehem Steel in
Lackawanna, New York,264 and U.S. Steel in Pittsburgh.265 In April of that year,
a twelve hour sit-down strike at Ford’s enormous River Rouge complex featured
in a lengthy and determined campaign by UAW activists to counter the veritable
reign of terror that the company had continued to use to suppress organizing
efforts.266
Fansteel actually fueled both modes of employer resistance. It undermined
labor’s ability to resort to the kinds of weapons—the sitdown strikes and
related tactics—that had proved so integral to the realization of meaningful
labor rights, and it signaled to the Board’s opponents the Board’s relatively
tolerant approach to such tactics.269 Ironically, though, employer
intransigence inspired continued resort to the sit-down strike, albeit in a
somewhat less frequent and less spectacular fashion than before.270…
It
is common to explain Taft-Hartley as a reaction to the dramatic expansion of
union power that occurred in the wake of the Wagner Act and as a response to
the sense that this power was being abused and needed regulation.390 This
account has some appeal in view of the huge gains in union membership during
this period, as well as the enormous strike waves that occurred during and
after the Second World War, and it is probably at least partially accurate. But
the fact that Taft-Hartley so faithfully adhered to the agenda developed by the
Smith Committee shows very clearly that the statute was rooted in the current
of organized anti-unionism that underlay the great wave of sit-down strikes of
1937 and 1938 and that persisted through the 1940s. Further evidence of this
connection appears in the fact that the very same coalition of business groups,
conservative unionists, and reactionary politicians who spearheaded the earlier
attempts at “reform” also played the lead role in enacting Taft-Hartley.391
This coalition was in no way satisfied by the rightward shift of the Board and
its policies in the period during and after the Smith Committee investigations,
nor was it content with the enactment of numerous state laws during this period
that limited the right to strike (including barring sit-down strikes) and
otherwise “equalized” the rights of labor and capital, which in many cases were
directed specifically at regulating sit-down strikes and punishing strikers for
strike-related violence.392 Supporters of Taft-Hartley relentlessly constructed
images of the Board and the Wagner Act as complicit in a perverted and out-of
control system of labor relations desperately in need of reform. To this end,
they invoked Fansteel and Southern Steamship not simply for what these cases
seemed to say about sit-down strikes, but as mandates against strike-related
violence, wildcat strikes, and mass picketing, as well as grounds for indicting
the Board’s purported indulgence of such conduct. This claim was built, in
part, on another series of investigations of the Board itself by House and
Senate committees, including pointed questioning of the Board’s conservative
chairman, Paul Herzog, regarding the Board’s fidelity to Southern Steamship.393
Even more cutting was the report of the House Committee on Education and Labor
on the lead bill in that chamber, which grudgingly confessed that Fansteel and
Southern Steamship had some effect on Board policy. But this, the report
asserted, was “very recent, inspired, it seems, by the public demand for fair
labor regulation.”394 The report continued: In cases involving violence in
strikes, the Board has seemed reluctant to follow the decisions of the courts.
It is inclined to reinstate, with back pay, strikers whom employers discharge
for what the Board seems to regard as minor crimes, such as interfering with
the United States mail, obstructing railroad right-of-way, discharging
firearms, rioting, carrying concealed weapons, malicious destruction of
property, and assault and battery.395 This interpretation of Fansteel and
Southern Steamship to justify broader attacks on the right to strike was also
backed by extensive and well cultivated testimony on strike violence, mass
picketing, wildcat strikes, and claims that existing laws and processes were inadequate
to deal with these problems. The House committee stands out in this regard, as
it repeatedly allowed company executives and managers, congressmen,
conservative unionists, and the occasional worker to present such conduct as
common features of post-Wagner Act labor relations.396 The 1946 Allis-Chalmers
strike was singled out, along with a couple of other disputes, and mined for
shocking information of this sort.397 Similarly extensive testimony was adduced
on mass picketing that occurred in a strike that same year at Detroit Steel
Products, which included picketing of a company manager’s home.398 For good
measure, the House committee inserted into its record a great number of
evocative photographs of strike violence and mass picketing from these and other
strikes.
The
Depression Era Sit-Down Strikes and the Limits of Liberal Labor Law
Ahmed
A. White∗
scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1040&context=shlr
(9) Charge Unfair labor practice by tanning co
Dixon evening telegraph, Dixon, Ill Thu Nov 4, 1937, p9
Charge Unfair labor practice by tanning co
Labor director says
employees fired for joining CIO
By the Associated press
Chicago Nov 3—The national
labor relations board issued a complaint today charging the Griess-Pfleger
Tanning co of Waukegan Ill with unfair labor practices.
Leonard C Bjork, regional
director of the labor board said the complaint alleged that on May 28, 1937,
the company discharged 17 employees because, during the preceding week, they
had joined the United Tannery Worker’s Union, a CIO affiliate.
Bjork said the complaint
further alleged that during May, 1937, the company’s officers and agents
“initiated, fostered, actively promoted and otherwise encouraged the formation
of the Waukegan Leather Worker’s Union, an unaffiliated organization.”
The complaint alleged, Bjork
said, that “employees desiring to participate in union activities were
interfered with, coerced and intimidated.”
The United Tannery Workers union
petitioned the labor board for an election to determine the employee’s
collective bargaining representative.
Bjork said a hearing on the
complaint and petition would begin Nov 8 before a labor board trial examiner in
the old post office building in Waukegan.
(10) Tannery union and company reach accord
Chicago Tribune, Sun Dec 12, 1937, p39
LC Bajork, acting regional
director of the national labor relations board, yesterday dismissed the case of
the United Tannery Worker’s union, a CIO organization, against the
Griess-Pflegger Tanning company of Waukegan as a result of a settlement between
the two parties.
The complaint was based on
the charge that seventeen employees dismissed in May were let out for union
activities. The CIO group demanded that the seventeen be restored. Under the
settlement signed by Harry Jordan, superintendent of the company, and officials
of the unions, nine of the discharged workers will be rehired and paid a total
of $1,638 in back wages.
It was agreed further than
an election will be held within the next fifteen days to determine if the CIO
union or the Waukegan Leather Workers association, an independent organization,
shall bargain for all the employees.
(11) Waukegan tanners reject CIO union Belvedere
Daily Republican, Belvedere, Ill. Fri Dec 24, 1937, p6
Waukegan tanners reject CIO union
By a substantial margin the
Committee for Industrial organization yesterday lost a fight to control union
employees of the Griess-Pfleger Tanning company in Waukegan.
The struggle between the
United Tannery Worker’s union, a CIO affiliate, and the Waukegan Leather
Workers’ Union, an independent organization, to determine which union should be
the collective bargaining agency.
Waukegan and North Chicago
labor leaders agreed that the rejection of the CIO union was a body blow for
the CIO union the Waukegan Industrial section. Recently the CIO started action
against the tannery before the labor board, charging that 17 employees had been
dismissed for union activities. This charge was denied and the hearing ended in
a compromise.
(12)
Waukegan plant election attacked by CIO Union Chicago Tribune Sat Dec
25, 1937, p15
Waukegan plant election attacked by CIO Union
Although the election was
held by the national labor relations board at the Griess-Pfeger Tanning Company
in Waukegan, a protest that it was unfairly conducted was filed with the board
yesterday by the United Tannery Worker’s union, a CIO group. Employees chose
the Waukegan leather Worker’s union by ballot on Thursday. The election was
part of an agreement which settled a labor dispute last May, when the company
discharged several employees. The CIO union charged the rival group was given
privileges denied to itself.
(13) Commuters hit by rail strike Salt Lake
Telegraph, Salt Lake City Utah, Tue Aug 16, 1938, p 2
Commuters hit by rail strike
Waukegan, Ill Aug 16 (AP)
Twenty thousand commuters, deprived of customary transportation to Chicago by
an electric railroad strike scurried for other passenger service today.
A frizzling rain added to
inconvenience of these residents of dozens of suburbs along the Lake Michigan
shore who ordinarily use the Chicago, North Shore & Milwaukee railroad.
Its service was suspended
after union employees voted to cease work in protest against a 15 per cent wage
cut order.
The Chicago &
Northwestern and the Chicago, Milwaukee, St Paul & Pacific steam roads
acquired a large share of the North Shore line passengers. Their tracks serve
virtually the same territories.
Both the Milwaukee and
Northwestern also expected increased business between Chicago and Milwaukee.
The electrified North shore line runs from Chicago’s loop through the north
shore suburbs to the heart of downtown Milwaukee.
All street car and bus
service in Waukegan and street cars in North Chicago, operated by the North
Shore line, were at a standstill. Waukegan is of 35,000 population and North
Chicago 11,000.
Officials estimated the
electric line carries 24,000 passengers daily, and that approximately 20,000
are regular commuters to Chicago.
Members of the Amalgamated
association of Street and electric Railway and motor coach employees of America
voted 442 to 6 to stop work.
Three other unions, the
Brotherhoods of Electric workers and of Locomotive firemen and enginemen and
the order of Railway Telegraphers unanimously ratified the decision.
(14)
Labor department takes hand in Chicago RR strike The Gazette and Daily,
York, Pennsylvania Wed Aug 17, 1938, p 2
Labor department takes hand in Chicago RR strike
Waukegan, Ill. Aug 16 (AP)
The United States labor department moved today to settle a wage controversy
which brought suspension of operations on the Chicago, North Shore and
Milwaukee railroad when employees refused to accept a 15 per cent wage slash.
Harry E Scheck, a federal
deprt of labor conciliator, announced he had received orders from Washington to
attempt negotiations for a settlement. Some 1,300 rail workers were idle and
some 20,000 commuters forced to find other transportation.
“The labor department,”
Scheck said, “is desirous of seeing this strike settled as early as possible.
There is no doubt in my mind
that the railroad is in financial difficulties. I will try to bring both sides
together.”
Interpreting a refusal by
the company to arbitrate the wage cut controversy as a “lockout” members of the
Amalgamated association of Street and electric Railway and motor coach
employees of America voted to stop work early today. Their action was quickly
ratified by three other unions—the brotherhoods of electric workers and of locomotive
firemen and enginemen and the order of Railway telegraphers.
(15) Trolley
strike pact approved Los Angeles Times, Mon Oct 3, 1938, p 7
Trolley
strike pact approved
Waukegan workers accept peace terms
Waukegan ill Oct 2 (AP) employees of the Chicago, North
shore and Milwaukee railroad tonight approved terms of a labor agreement to end
the strike which has paralyzed service on the electric line since August 16.
A group of ninety-two operating workers meeting in
Milwaukee voted unanimously to accept terms proposed by the management a few
hours after 500 employees sanctioned them at a meeting here. The railroad had
employed 950 operating workers.
The agreement called for resumption of work at the wage
scale in effect before employees walked out in protest against a 15 per cent
wage cut and designated the Amalgamated Association of Street, Electric Railway
and Motor Coach employees as the sole bargaining agent.
It provided that employees shall receive part of their
salaries in certificates for ninety days, the certificates to be redeemable in
one year with interest.
(16)
Dying for work: Worker’s safety and health in twentieth-century America, edited
by David Rosner, Gerald E Markowitz
Indiana University Press (February 22, 1989) 256 pages
During his two-decade tenure, Brown left a strong
personal imprint on the company and helped mold it into the corporate giant of
today. He protected the health and life of the company during the great
depression and helped it achieve rapid growth during the 1930s and 1940s.
He was a public relations expert, and he became a
national business spokesman. Brown, as
we shall see, also instituted the corporate cover-up of asbestos hazards,
directed by his brother Vandiver Brown, council for Johns-Manville for many
years.
….The authors then went on, inappropriately and
improperly, to their forth conclusion that “asbestos as observed in this series
of cases had not resulted in marked disability in any case.” To be sure, the authors did not observe any
“marked” disability in this observed series of cases, having dismissed as
subjective the symptoms of disability the workers had reported. But their study
design, in which the doctors chose to examine only active workers, obviated
their seeing cases of serious disability. At the point where workers became
seriously disabled, their shortness of breath and general state of weakness
presumably prevented them from normal work in an industrial job, and they would
have then left the active work force, it was then methodologically improper to
concluded, as the authors did that the disease did not cause serious
disability.
The only part of the study which might have reflected on
serious disability and death among the asbestos workers was an examination of
worker insurance claims for death and disability in asbestos companies with
group insurance. However, the authors wrote, the number of claims was so small
that “reliable conclusions cannot be reached.” no comments were made by the authors about the
social circumstances which might result in fewer or greater number of claims,
nor was any cohort study undertaken which followed a group of workers forward
from some date and continued following them if they left the employ of the
company either because of job transfer, disability or death.
This 1935 study, commissioned by companies in the US
asbestos industry was the first in a long series of industry-sponsored studies
which have continued to the present day. Comparison of these studies of various
asbestos-related diseases with those not funded by the asbestos industry have
shown a consistent pattern over the decades of denying that asbestos was the
cause of a particular disease, minimizing the severity of an asbestos-caused
disease was in this study of asbestos), or the shifting of blame for the disease
from asbestos exposure to other causes. Meanwhile, scientific studies not
sponsored by the asbestos industry—studies by various government agencies and
by academic-based and personal physicians—just as consistently found asbestos
exposure to be harmful to worker’s health.
The emerging pattern of active asbestos industry
involvement in asbestos-disease research and the consistent differences between
the results of this and other research becomes clearer with the emergence of
other another asbestos-related disease—lung cancer.
1935—asbestos exposure and lung cancer (worldwide
asbestos production—420,000 metric tons)
In 1935, Kenneth Lynch and WA Smith, professors of the
medical college of south Carolina, published an autopsy report of an asbestos
worker who had both asbestosis and lung cancer. This was notable because at
that time widespread cigarette smoking among the us population was in its
infancy and cases of lung cancer were rare, especially in combination with
asbestosis, another disease which the authors considered unusual…
Under the tenure of Lewis H Brown, the twenty-year period
from 1932 until 1951—the year Brown died—was one of unprecedented growth for
the company. During that period US domestic consumption of asbestos rose from a
depression low of 85,000 metric tons in 1932 to 725,000 metric tons in 1951, a
spectacular 8 ½-fold increase in domestic consumption. This record growth
accrued overwhelmingly to Johns-Manville, which has an almost monopolistic
dominance of the asbestos industry throughout the period.
J-M sales and
stock values shot up after 1932. Company sales, which hit a low of $20 million
in 1932 had tripled to $60 million by 1937. During this five-year period J-M
earnings went from an operating loss of about $1 million in 1932 to a profit of
$5.4 million in 1937. J-M stock, down to a low of $10 a share in 1932, was back
up to $65 a share in February, 1934, already above the value of 450-$55 a share
which JP Morgan had paid to buy it in the halcyon days of 1927. There was a
temporary one-year fall-off in sales and profits in 1938, the year of the
so-called Great Depression II, but sales and profits took off again as World
war II approached.
Bringing J-M onto this sales and profits boom was
president Lewis H Brown. The spectacular success of the company he directed,
plus his public relations abilities, brought him to national attention as a
leader and spokesperson for all US business.
On April 3,1939, his picture adorned the cover of Time
magazine, and the cover story was entitled “Public relations: Corporate soul.” In practice, however, at least in regard to
employees’ health and lives, he pursued old-fashioned, single-minded
management. He and his brother Vandiver kept a close watch on the asbestos
health issue and controlled it as much as they could. As noted above, they had
Johns-Manville invest in health research at respected institutions and by
capable scientists, but then actively intervened to influence the scientific
reports that came out.
Besides intervening the Lanza paper, Johns-Manville and
other asbestos companies funding animal studies at Saranac laboratory inserted
into their 1936 agreement with Saranac the following provision:
It is our further understanding that the results obtained
will be considered the property of those who are advancing the required funds,
who will determine whether, to what extent and in what manner they shall be
made public. In the event it is deemed desirable that the result be made
public, the manuscript of your study will be submitted to us for approval prior
to publication.
Gardner was criticized by Brown for violating this
agreement by referring to asbestos work in the lab’s 1938 annual report and in
the Air Hygene Foundation Digest. Gardner complained to Dr Harriet Hardy a few
months before his death in 1946 that “Johns-Manville won’t allow him to publish
his findings.”
Asbestos industry companies also acted to keep articles
about asbestos health hazards out of their trade magazines. For example, A S
Rossiter, editor of asbestos magazine, requested in a letter to Sumner Simpson,
president of Raybestos-Manhattan dated September 25, 1935 that he approve
publication of a proposed review of asbestosis and control measures. She said
in the letter, “always you have requested that for certain obvious reasons we
publish nothing, and naturally your wishes have been” observed. Simpson, in an
October 1 cover letter to Vandiver Brown with the Rossiter request said “I
think the less said about asbestos, the better off we are.” In his October 3 letter
of reply, Brown said “I quite agree with you that our interests are best served
by having asbestosis receive a minimum of publicity.” permission was denied.
This policy of limiting public information about asbestos
disease was carried even further with workers who were victims of these
diseases. In some cases during this era worker/ victims of asbestos appear to
have been summarily fired because of their work-induced disability. For
example, when federal industrial hygienists were summoned by North Carolina
state officials to conduct health studies on workers in three local asbestos
textile plants in 1938, they found that approximately 150 older workers out of
a total work for of 540 persons had recently been fired and replaced by younger
workers with little or no asbestos experience. 49 of the 69 fired employees
located by the federal scientists, 43 were found to have asbestosis. This was
confirmed in several follow-up studies by local physicians.
Other cases soon followed. By 1942, William Hueper stated
that the evidence linking asbestos and lung cancer was “suggestive” that
asbestos dust exposure could cause lung cancer.37 in addition to the active
medical research in the US and Great Britain, many German scientists studied
and reported a link between asbestos dust exposure and lung cancer.
US asbestos companies, already concerned about reports
linking their industry to asbestosis, did not publicly ignore the cancer
reports for years, as they had asbestosis reports. (There was a seven-year time
period between the first medical publication in English on asbestosis (Cooke,
1924) and the 1931 publication of the first industry sponsored study, an animal
study, by Gardner and Cummings. The time period is at least twice as long if
one measures the duration of time when asbestos was popularly understood to
cause lung problems—see e.g, ref 24.) an industry-sponsored paper published by
Vorwald and Karr or Saranac laboratory in 1938 noted the absence of lung cancer
among the large group of asbestosis patients treated at that facility and
dismissed the various case study reports of lung cancer among asbestosis
victims.
(17) Asbestos: Medical and legal aspects by Barry I.
Castelman, Stephen L Berger, Aspen publishers, 2005, 894 pages
In 1935
johns-Manville was hit with another volley of lawsuits (about 20) from former
employees at its Waukegan, Illinois plant. These workers alleged injury due to
asbestos and other dusts in the workplace. The courts first rejected
Johns-Manville’s assertion that occupational disease was covered exclusively
under the state worker’s compensation law; but later, they threw out the suits
against johns-Manville, ruling that workers had no right to either bring such
suits under common law or file worker’s compensation claims. The Illinois
legislature promptly expanded the compensation law to include occupational
disease, and the state distributed thousands of pamphlets to publicize the
changes. A railroad industry doctor, acknowledging problems of exposure to
asbestos and other dusts in railroads, worried that publicity about the
Illinois law would create a “fear complex” along with unjustified compensation
suits or claims.
(18) Defending
the indefensible by Jock McCullouch, Geoffrey Tweedale, OLP Oxford, July
24,2008, 338 pages pages 33-34
Hugh Jackson spent his career working for Johns-Manville
mostly in plant safety. From 1952 to 1960 he was manager of the Industrial
health section and he reported directly to Dr. Kenneth Smith, the corporation’s
medical director. Jackson often visited the Waukegan factory in Illinois,
where, within a single complex Johns-Manville manufactured thermal insulation,
textiles, paper, Mill board and sheet materials. It also made pipe coverings,
shingles and flat boards. during the manufacture of shingles, asbestos, cement
and silica were combined into slurry, then pressed, dried and cut into
sections. According to Jackson, many of the jobs at Waukegan were dusty. The
asbestos would arrive in 100 lb. burlap bags, which along with the silica would
be dumped by hand into the machines.
There was no proper ventilation and the men would breathe in fibre. That
pattern is repeated at numerous factories throughout the US.
Asbestos dust scattered well beyond the factory gates.
The streets around T&N’s Roberts’ plant in Leeds were awash with fibre and
in the words of one resident: “it was as though we were eating dust. I remember
dust and fibre all around the streets near the factory. You could see the dust
in then air. I’ve seen it blow around like a snowstorm. “ in addition, workers brought dust home on
their clothes. A physician who worked for an American manufacturer described
that problem in the following way: “once asbestos gets into the home, carried
home by workmen, it is there virtually permanently—it gets into rugs, into the
carpets, it gets suspended by movement and actually you are getting 24 hour/
day exposure.”
(19) The Silence: The Asbestos Industry and Early
Occupational Cancer Research-A Case Study David E. Lilienfeld, MD, MPH, MS
Engin
The attributes of asbestos, a silicate, that fostered its
widespread use have been known for at least two millenia. Yet it was the unique
confluence of the Industrial Revolution, innovations in building construction,
and the economic growth in the United States that led to its widespread use
during the past century. Insulation was needed for efficient energy use to maximize
engine power. Resistance to both heat degradation and combustion was desirable.
Asbestos was such a material. The asbestos industry developed as a response to
this need for insulation. It grew in tandem with the post-Civil War development
of heavy industry. During the late 1800s, many in the industry thought that if
asbestos felts could limit engine heat loss, then asbestos roofing felts might
similarly limit building heat loss. Asbestos became a construction material.
Rapid growth of the industry was not without serious consequences." In the
1920s, for example, the medical community recognized a fibrotic lung condition,
similar to silicosis, that resulted from asbestos exposure.9'12 T7e Hazard
Suggested In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the hazards of occupational silica
exposure were recognized, and the widespread nature of such exposures became
apparent. They were made clear in a landmark 1917 report by a young Public
Health Service (PHS) physician, Anthony Joseph Lanza." After entering the
PHS in 1907, Lanza was detailed to the Fort Stanton, New Mexico, Marine
Hospital Tuberculosis Sanatorium. He left that assignment with an interest in
pulmonary medicine and the clinical skills to pursue it. In 1914, Lanza was
appointed as the Chief Surgeon to the Bureau of Mines. He was assigned to the
Joplin, Missouri, lead and zinc mining areas "to investigate and report on
the prevalence, causes, and methods of control of pulmonary diseases among
miners."'15 A series of investigations followed that quickly established
him as an expert in the pneumoconioses.14 Reprint requests should be addressed
to David E. Lilienfeld, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Division of
Environmental and Occupational Medicine, Department of Community Medicine, Box
1057, 1 Gustave L. Levy Place, New York NY 10029. American Journal of Public
Health 791 Pubic Health Then and Now Further assignments in occupational
medicine followed. In 1920, Lanza left the PHS to practice and consult in the
private sector. Six years later, he was hired by the Metropolitan Life
Insurance Company to "provide industrial medicine and industrial hygiene
services to companies whose group life insurance policies were held by the
Metropolitan."'"4 The Metropolitan also provided these services to
companies whose disability or workmen's compensation policies it carried. The
recognition of silicosis and its association with employment practices, coupled
with a high injury rate in many industries (particularly in mining), led to the
enactment of workmen's compensation statutes in the United States between 1910
and 1930.16,17 Corporations bore this system's cost as a business expense. It
was therefore only in the 1920s that the Metropolitan's services were needed by
industry. At the same time, asbestosis was identified as a distinct entity
caused by asbestos.6 No direct evidence exists that these reports were alarming
to the industry. However, subsequent events suggest that the companies did not
immediately acknowledge (or desire to do so) the hazard created by asbestos exposure.
One response was a 1929 request by several asbestos companies to the
Metropolitan for an industrial hygiene survey of several of their plants. The
survey also was to determine if asbestosis even existed.6"8 If the disease
did not exist, then there could be no liabilities from it. An additional
concern was whether asbestosis led to tuberculosis in a manner akin to
silicosis, since asbestos was a silicate. If asbestosis did so, the
compensation costs would be much greater. Lanza, an expert in the pneumoconioses,
was to direct the study. Lanza was well aware of the legal implications of such
work. For example, in November 1929, he had sent to Mr. Allan Wardwell (of
Davis and Polk, a Wall Street law firm and Johns-Manville's outside corporate
counsel) a bibliography on asbestosis.'9 A year later, Lanza wrote to Wardwell
concerning the definition of asbestosis to be used in the workmen's
compensation schedule for New Jersey, then being codified.20 The surveys found
that asbestosis, present in large segments of the industry's workforce, did not
predispose to tuberculosis.21-23 In 1931, Lanza sent the American plants survey
findings to Wardwell, noting: "It is, of course, understood that this
report is confidential and it will be given no publicity by us except with the
consent of the firms concemed."24 A similar report for the Canadian plants
(written by Lanza's superior, E. McConnell, MD) was also sent to Wardwell.25
Three months later, at a meeting with JohnsManville officials, Lanza
recommended the inclusion of asbestosis under workmen's compensation: "
[He] is very strongly of the opinion that asbestosis should be made
compensable.... He feels that this is the only protection which the industry
has ... permitting the disease to remain outside the compensable class lends
encouragement to unethical lawyers and physicians to work up claims."2 By
1932, Johns-Manville had several suits against it from workers with
asbestosis.27 In contesting these suits, the corporation sought to question the
diagnosis of pulmonary disease. In February, Lanza wrote to F.V. Meriwether,
MD, of the US Bureau of Mines, requesting his assistance in reviewing some
x-rays from the Manville, New Jersey, plant.28 In a follow-up letter from S.A.
Williams (JohnsManville Vice President for Mines and Production), Meriwether
was told "you will readily appreciate that we desire the results ofyour
readings to be held in strictest confidence and that no unnecessary publicity
be given to the fact that you are making these readings for us ... we wish, if
possible, to prevent the results of our efforts being used against us either in
the pending suits or in any suits which maybe brought against us."27
Meriwether subsequently agreed.29 Vandiver Brown, Johns-Manville's general
counsel, coordinated the logistics.' In 1933, Williams wrote to A. R. Fisher
(manager of the Manville, NewJersey, plant) concerning Lanza's reply to
questions from a physician at Johns-Manville's Waukegan, Illinois, plant.31 The
Waukegan physician had reportedly asked Lanza, "Do you agree with my
recommendation that employees definitely be made aware of the fact that
asbestos dust is hazardous to their health?" Lanza replied: "I doubt
if the hazard is sufficient to justify warning posters.... This is especially
true in view of the extraordinary legal situation." The legal aspects of
the situation had had an impact on a physician's (i.e., Lanza's) approach to a
medical problem, i.e., they led him to ignore it. Later in the exchange, the
plant physician noted: "I have made a diagnosis of asbestosis.... In my
judgment the best disposition of such a case is to remove him from the dust and
give him a job in some other part of the plant." Lanza replied: "It
is difficult.... One of the difficulties and vexations ... of pneumoconiosis is
that economics as well as production factors, must be balanced against the
medical factors."
(20) Johns-Manville employees choose AFL Labor
union Chicago Tribune, Wed Nov 17, 1937, P 14
Employees of the
Johns-Manville company plant in Waukegan voted yesterday 1.505 to 511 in favor
of local No 19,508 of the federal labor union as their representatives in
collective bargaining with the company for the next year. This union is
affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. An independent union of employees
was the defeated organization(21) Testimony of Charles H. Roemer, Deposition taken April 25, 1984, Johns-Manville Corp., et al. v. the United States of America, U.S. Claims Court Civ. No. 465-83C, cited in (16) Dying for Work: Workers' Safety and Health in Twentieth-Century America (Interdisciplinary Studies in History) Published by Indiana Univ Press (first published February 22nd 1989)
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