208 ChaPter^4
Congressmen introduced new anti-labor laws and all over “labor’s allies were
on weaker ground than their opponents.” For his part, Roosevelt was work-
ing more closely than ever with major industrialists. With Thomas Lamont of
J.P. Morgan’s Banking House as his main contact, FDR and the head of U.S.
Steel met in March 1937 and agreed on the approach to take with Steelworkers,
who signed a contract just thereafter. The president also worked with Bill
Knudsen and Walter Chrysler, directors at GM, and received support from the
Harrimans and Carl Grey of the Union Pacific Railroad, as well as other rail-
way titans. Walter Teagle of Standard Oil, Gerald Swope of GE, and Robert
Armory, a leading textile producer, came on board with the New Deal and
Wagner Act as well. As Labor Secretary Frances Perkins admitted, “it may be
surprising to some people to realize that men looked upon as the conservative
branch of the Roosevelt administration were cooperative in bringing about a
new, more modern, and more reasonable attitude on the part of employers
toward collective bargaining.” Obviously, had FDR been “radical,” these cor-
porate leaders would not have worked with him.
Now that public opinion was not pro-labor and FDR was on such good
terms with corporate leaders, labor had another wave of strikes [again, see next
section] but politicians who had been at least neutral before now turned
against labor. Democratic governors in union-friendly states like Ohio and
Indiana sent out the militias to break strikes and protect scabs, as they always
had in the old days. Even FDR, less than a year after a re-election heavily sup-
ported by labor organization and money, said “a plague on both your houses”
to workers and bosses during the so-called Little Steel Strikes. Roosevelt no
longer saw the political benefit in Democrats being seen as so pro-labor, and
they retreated from the CIO and mass-production unionism. Making matters
worse, labor itself was having a virtual civil war. While the NLRB remained a
friend to unions, employers and many politicians attacked it as pro-CIO, and
found an unexpected ally in their fight against labor—the AFL!
The CIO’s rival union, rather than show class solidarity and work out its
differences over the importance of mass industrial unionism compared to
smaller craft unions, joined forces with conservatives and corporate leaders to
change the Wagner Act. This led to full-on attack on the CIO and the NLRB
by Republicans, southern Democrats, corporations, and the AFL, all of which
also began to “red bait”—accuse the CIO and NLRB of having Communists
in its ranks or being otherwise influenced by “Reds”—pro-labor activists. In