Chapter 6, section 4: We'll Turn the Whole Town Against the Commies

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Right: Evansville UE Local 813 members picket Seeger (formerly Sunbeam), April 1948. By the postwar era, many District 8 activists viewed the union as a visionary force for social transformation.

While Evansville executives such as those at Seeger argued that high community wages would keep companies from locating in Evansville, Local 813 argued that their struggle was for a living wage on union based community standards that would raise Evansville up from “southern” wage standards.

 
photo courtesy UE Archives-University of Pittsburgh

 

 
Left, Mary Ruth Jackson and Bill Schwartz asked Sears Roebuck shoppers not to buy Coldspot refrigerators which were made by Seeger Refrigerator Company for Sears. Active community action brought workers' issues to the community.
photo courtesy UE Archives-University of Pittsburgh  
 
A variety of forces were aligned, using community leverage to counter that of the UE's.

The Merrill law firm and Servel were key organizers for the Evansville Council for Community Service (ECCS), a "new civic organization" that formed soon after the UE organized Servel.

The UE charged that the ECCS was simply a new version of the discredited Evansville Cooperative League, the antilabor employer organization established in 1936 with the impetus of Servel President Louis Ruthenberg.

The ECCS sought to oppose "subversive elements which might uproot" the "American system," and was yet another incarnation of the Citizens' Industrial Alliance, but this time with more intense efforts at organizing all "civic minded person[s]" to oppose "ideals contrary to the United States Constitution."

D. Bailey Merrill

 

 
As the strike loomed, the UAW-CIO tried to win Seeger (formerly Sunbeam) away from the UE, even though there was supposed to be a no-raid agreement within CIO unions. That did not operate well for radical unions, and the UE already was fair game for raids even before the split with the CIO. Above, in an ad placed by the UE in Evansville papers, UE workers tell why they want their union. Below, an excerpt.

The "Spirit of Kilroy" veterans group organized by anti-UE agent Arthur Robinson staged an anti-Wallace parade designed to suggest the UE's support of 3rd party Presidential candidate Henry Wallace was a Communist plot. They built on the idea that the third-party challenge was "un-American."

A veterans' group dubbed the "Spirit of Kilroy" and led by Arthur Robinson pledged to eradicate the Communist influence in the union. Republican congressman Edward Mitchell joined in, accusing Local 813 president Albert Eberhard of being a "pinko." Eberhard replied that Mitchell was "a dirty liar" and asserted, "I'm a Democrat. Sometimes I vote Republican when I feel the better man is in that party. I'm a Catholic, and I hope a good one. In the face of that the pinko charge is absurd. I'm as good a citizen as Ed Mitchell or anyone else."

At right, workers at Bucyrus Erie engaged in recreational activities sponsored by the company, 1919.

The company was headquartered in Milwaukee, WI., and had adhered to the NMTA, the old anti-union foe that had defeated unions in the earlier era, since the early 20th century, in all of their operations across the U.S.

B-E was a major employer in Evansville, and winning these workers to unionism had been the goal of the Evansville UE for several years. Mostly all of the 800 workers were men; only 30 were women.

Winning a solid contract against the Bucyrus-Erie would check off another hard-core anti-union company in Evansville, and would provide the base to continue the UE's expansion in southern Indiana and the District's souther periphery.
  photo from Willard Library, Evansville, Indiana
 
 

 

Below: Bucyrus Erie workers made heavy-duty road and excavating equipment such as this steam shovel
 

In 1947, Bucyrus-Erie workers joined the UE to try to break through the staunch anti-unionism that had guided the company for 2 generations.

B-E on the other hand sought to reign in the union's plan for pattern based bargaining that was built from community-level organizing.

R. Knox, head of the company, was involved with the NMTA,. It staged a political showdown, saying it would refused to bargain with the UE because it was "communist-dominated", taking cues from Servel's old community-based strategies in Evansville.

Already spies from Servel and factional union foes were involved in planning the showdown, which resulted in a Congressional investigation of Communist influence during the strike over a living wage at B-E.

photo from Bucyrus-Erie website
 

 

   
W.R. Knox, head of Bucyrus-Erie, used the Taft-Hartley act and Sentner's status as "red" to refuse to negotiate with the UE. Sentner had organized a national consortium with steelworkers' local to use a community-based strategy for pattern bargaining. This was alarming to Knox, who used the "red" issue and the war scare of 1948.
   

The Taft-Hartley affidavits referred to in this additional excerpt from the letter gave extensive leverage to companies who wanted to get rid of left-led unions. Initially, most CIO unions refused to sign the oaths, which demanded that no union officials could use the NLRB services unless they were willing to sign the non-communist affidavits.

Sentner asked Knox for a town meeting or a debate on whether he had ever advocated violence, followed the CP line, or committed an act against the U.S. He considered filing a lawsuit for defamation against Knox as well.

 
excerpt from Local 813 officers letter to members, May 27, 1948

 

 August 1948—B_E workers, on strike, in the UE tent, which was almost a permanent fixture in the Evansville area, where UE waged its fights. B-E workers wanted the company to join the community wage pattern established in the Evansville area. B-E labelled the workers the base for Communist conspiracy in the U.S. Charles Wright is standing on the left.
photo from UE Archives-University of Pittsburgh
  
From the picket line a soup kitchen was busy 24 hours a day. "Brother Heerdink standing, Brother Joe Antey pouring coffee for another strikers and Brother William Ledbetter at the table busy checking up on picket duty. "
photo from UE Archives-University of Pittsburgh
  
 
The community-based campaign at B-E was effective, using leaflet distribution to bring the issues to the community worked to sustain the union despite the attacks.
Picket captain Luther Cross argues with deputy sheriff. Elbert Cain, in overalls and hat, was chairman of the strike headquarters committee for the union. Strikers efforts to keep strikebreakers from crossing the line earned them the charge of "communist-influenced" workers
  photo courtesy UE Archives-University of Pittsburgh
One of the leaflets entered into the record by Landis and Mitchell. The leaflet appealed to the class and community consciousness of foremen, but the Congressmen painted it as evidence of subversiveness. Scan from National Archives
As a group of women picket the entrance, a few workers cross the line, protected by a phalanx of state police brought in under a plan established by the Evansville ECCS.
   
This cordone of state police were brought in under the heightened charges that the workers went on strike because of Communist influence, but in reality, the local police force could not be trusted by the corporations of Evansville.
 
courtesy University of Southern Indiana, David Rice Library
 
Faultless Castor executive's letter to Edward Mitchell. Other Evansville employers sought to join in on "the kill" of the UE by going after labor activists associated with the Left. The woman mentioned in the letter was one of the strongest union activists in the Faultless plant. The 1946 Faultless strike had brought about a militant core of activists who were part of community campaigns in Evansville. Mitchell and Landis portrayed these activists as subversive anti-American influences whose names and addresses should be revealed in order that the workers would be targets for vigilante-style campaings. Young was among the Evansville workers blacklisted in the aftermath of the hearings.
 
Landis and Mitchell at HELC hearings in Evansville
The strategy of using Congressional Committees during strikes and suggesting the workers were being led by subversive, and un-American was not new. At Allis-Chalmers, another NMTA firm headquartered in B-E's hometown, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the conservative Hearst newspaper, the Milwaukee Sentinel, led the campaign. It suggested that the UAW local there was a base for Stalin's influence in Wisconsin and needed to be squashed. See Stephen Meyer's book on the subject for this story.
 
The Evansville Courier, September 10, 1948. The Courier had been part of the coalition out to expel UE Left from the community. Their editorial fairly gloated now that Bucyrus-Erie Strike investigations prompted a congressional investigation into the "communist influence" on the UE. Below, the Courier predicts the fall of the "dead bird" subversives of the UE.

 

 
Edward Mitchell was elected in 1946, and sought to make charges of Communist influence over labor the central campaign theme. When workers at Bucyrus-Erie went on strike, he launched a campaign, guided by Servel and other corporate leaders, that brought Congressional investigations to Evansville. Workers were paraded before the committee and their home addresses were listed in the paper, while Congressmen encouraged vigilante violence against those who refused to cooperate. The hearings and other backlash against the union ended the strike. However, Mitchell lost the election of 1948, and the union fought back, winning worker allegiance through a feisty campaign.
  click for larger version image from Indiana State Archvies click here to read excerpts from the hearings
 

But the events in Evansville convinced key leaders, especially Wagner Local 1104, to withdraw support for Sentner's election.

When the district convention opened on September 25, 1948 , Sentner, after a long soliloquy on the struggles of the past and the present, closed with an announcement that both he and Logsdon would not seek reelection to district office.

He believed that "it is a grievous error to try to make a political organization out of a labor union. It is just as much an error to maintain that a union is nothing but a pure and simple economic organization." He acknowledged those who had "reluctantly voiced the opinion that I should step aside in the interest of the organization. Some of you have told me that you believe that my stepping aside will greatly assist in unifying our membership in the fight against the employers and the enemies of this union. . . . You say that . . . red-baiting and the war hysteria makes it more difficult, if not almost impossible for you to continue your support to me."

Sentner noted that "in principle I cannot agree with you because to concede that one's political beliefs bar one from holding office in this union makes concession to those who would change the Constitution of our Union, as well as pervert the basic democratic concepts upon which this nation was founded." Despite his objections, Sentner noted the "sincerity of those who have asked me to consider this matter in the light of the red-baiting war hysteria that has engulfed our nation" and cannot be "ignored."

   
Lowell Waldron, 1941 photo. Courtesy John Logsdon. Lee Henry, late 1940s. Photo Courtesy William Sentner Jr.

A renewed commitment to racial justice was expressed when Lowell Waldron of Local 1104 Wagner Electric withdrew from the executive board in order to elect African American delegate Lee Henry of Local 1104 for his position. The new unity resulted in overwhelming delegate votes "against red-baiting" and other "progressive" resolutions. Local 813 members united behind restoring the jobs of many of the workers blacklisted because of the HELC hearings

 
UE conducted their own hearings to refute the charges of the Congressional hearings and to expose the network of operatives at work in Evansville. This, in addition to a Yale Professor's study of the events brought a different focus. This may have accounted for the defeat of Mitchell in Evansville.
 

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