Today in 1947, the Taft-Hartley Act became law.
Republican Robert A. Taft (son of president William Howard Taft) pushed the Taft-Hartley in an effort to restrain the power of unions. The bill would allow the president to order employees back to work in the event of a strike. The employees would work through an 80-day cooling off period. During this period, collective bargaining between the company and the union continue.
The Act also permitted states to adopt right-to-work laws and ban the closed shops. Right-to-work laws are statuetes which prohibit agreements between unions and employers making membership or payment of union dues a condition of employment. The closed shop had been a powerful asset for unions. Closed shops were closed to those who did not belong to the corresponding union. If everyone had to be a member of the union it would make the union more strong as it would have the support of all employee. By eliminating union membership as a prerequisite for many jobs, unions lot a great deal of their power and their ability to organize.
Now that union membership was no longer required for employment, union members recognized that they would be replaced if they went on strike. Ordinarily, they might have been able to use alternative methods to sway their employers’ opinions, but the Taft-Hartley Act banned these as well. Both sympathy strikes and secondary boycotts were banned. The secondary boycotts are labor actions directed not at an employer, but those who did business with the employer. The theory was that if the companies lost business they would pressure the employer to follow the demands of the union. This was an effective way to keep employees in their jobs working but also make demands against their employers. By removing this, the unions were forced to follow more traditional (and now less effective) means of demanding change.
Finally, union officials were required to swear they were not communists, reflecting the new red scare sweeping the nation. Those who refused to make such a statement were left without legal protection and the nation’s largest union, the CIO, expelled numerous left-wing officials and eleven communist-led unions, representing almost one million workers. For some Americans, this also created a permanent link between unions and communism.
President Truman vetoed the bill, but the Republican-controlled Congress over turned his veto with a two-thirds vote.
Tag Archives: U.S. History
Losing Faith
Today in 1972, the Watergate scandal began. A group known as the Plumbers broke into the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington, D.C., beginning a series of events that revealed the corruption that was plaguing the federal government.
That year, President Nixon was running for reelection against the Democratic nominee, George McGovern. McGovern was supported from party liberals who agreed with opposition to the war and his agreement with feminism. However, McGovern was too liberal for many Americans with his support to legalize marijuana and legalizing abortion. By November, the question was not whether Nixon would win the election, but why what percentage. Nixon won in a landslide, taking 61% of the vote.
However, Nixon was a troubled man. While brilliant, he was also extremely paranoid. He created an “enemies list” that included reporters, politicians, and celebrities that he perceived as unfriendly to the administration. Nixon created a special investigation unit known as the Plumbers to gather information about David Ellsberg, a former government official who had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971. Nixon ordered his Plumbers to not only find information about Ellsberg, but to burglarize the office of his psychiatrist to discover his weaknesses.
On June 17, 1972 five former employees of Nixon’s reelection committee broke into the Democratic headquarters. The police immediately recognized that these were not run-of-the-mill burglars, as they were armed with walkie-talkies, bugging devices, and $2000 in new one hundred dollar bills. Suspiciously, Nixon’s press secretary responded to the break-in by calling it a third rate burglary attempt and to be wary of any elements who might to stretch it beyond that. To those already concerned that Nixon might be involved, this immediate denial seemed to be a red flag.
More and more information became available in the weeks and months following the break-in. By the middle of 1974, it was clear that Nixon might not have known about Watergate before hand, but that he had become involved afterward by authorizing payments to the burglars if they would remain silent or commit perjury. He instructed the FBI to halt its investigation of the crime. Reporters from The Washington Post traced some of the money used in Watergate to the Nixon campaign. When the burglars were sentenced in 1973, the judge warned them that if they did not reveal who paid them, they would receive much longer sentences. Soon after, two Nixon aides resigned and Nixon fired the White House counsel who had agreed to participate with prosecutors.
Until this point, there was no hard evidence linking Nixon to the incident, just a great deal of suspicion. However, it was discovered that Nixon had secretly taped everything in the Oval Office (the tape recorded was left over from the Johnson years). Nixon refused to hand the tapes over, instead offering his own edited transcripts. The Supreme Court unanimously ordered Nixon to provide copies of the tapes. However, Nixon continued to refuse. At this time eighty-four members of the House filed sixteen bills of impeachment. Finally, a transcript was provided. Even the edited version severely hurt Nixon’s case. This, along with other evidence, revealed that on June 23, 1972 Nixon definitely knew that the burglars were linked the White House and that he knew his attorney general had been involved.
Three more articles of impeachment were adopted by the House; charging the president with obstruction of justice, using federal agencies to harass private citizens, and hindering the Senate committee’s effort to investigate a cover-up. Fearful of being convicted, Nixon resigned on August 8, 1974.
Watergate revealed the corruption that plagued the government. Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned in 1973 after revelations appeared that he had accepted bribes from construction firms while he was governor of Maryland. Nixon’s attorney general and two White House aides were convicted of obstruction of justice in regards to Watergate and were sent to jail. Americans, who had grown wary of a government that had kept them fighting in Vietnam since 1964, lost confidence in their national leaders.
“The more you kill and burn, the better you will please me.”
Today in 1898, the Philippines gained “independence” from Spain. Oh, but there’s more to this story!
In this same year, the United States engaged in what politicians of the day called “the Splendid Little War.” Since the focus of this blog is not Cuba but the Philippines, here is the quick and low down on that war. Spain controlled Cuba and Cubans revolted against this rule. American expansionists, such as Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, wanted to recognize Cuba’s independence. Lodge wanted Spain to stop beating down on the Cubans, which was interfering with American-owned property on the island amounting $100 million in trade. A battleship, Maine, was sent to Cuba and exploded on February 15, 1898. Spain was blamed for the sinking of the ship (although it likely a spontaneous combustion in the ship’s coal bunker). Americans rallied to go to war. In August, a peace treaty was being drawn up. The Treaty of Paris included Spain giving control of the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico to the U.S. and providing Cuban independence. Eventually, the U.S. provided $20 million to Spain for these territories. The Philippines requested independence, but the U.S. denied such a request.
Ok, so now to the focus of the Philippines and the U.S. President McKinley was convinced that the inhabitants of the islands were unprepared for independence. He often used religion as a reason for the U.S. to stay invested there; in one interview with Methodist ministers he spoke of receiving a revelation that the Americans had a duty to uplift and civilize the Filipino people and to train them for self-government. Sounds nice, but the reality is that the Filipino people had long been inhabited by the Spanish and were extremely Christianized, especially when compared with neighboring islands and people.
The true motivation for the U.S. interest was its desire to have a foothold in the East. During this same time, Japan was growing in power and in response Great Britain, the U.S. and other western nations were trying to hold on to trade with China. The U.S. also held the opportunity for strategic ports for an expanding navy. The Philippines refused to comply, and organized their own government, wrote a constitution, and called themselves the Philippine Republic. This led to one of the ugliest wars in U.S. history.
The war lasted from February 1899 to 1902 and cost the U.S. over 4,000 lives. The Philippines lost over 200,000 its own people. Both sides committed frightening atrocities. For example, when Filipinos massacred an American regiment and stuffed molasses into the disemboweled corpses to attract ants, General Jacob Smith reported told his soldiers, “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn, the better you will please me.” American troops burned entire towns to the ground, placing villagers in concentration camps and regularly used the “water cure” to find get information from their prisoners. We now call this water boarding.
After the war ended in 1902, the U.S. continued its influence in the Philippines. The American appointed governor, William Howard Taft (and later U.S. president) believed that it might take a century “to raise the Filipinos to the condition where they could appreciate what Anglo-Saxon liberty is.”
In 1916, the Jones Act promised Philippine independence but set no date. It would not be until 1946, after World War II, that the Philippines finally became an independence nation, over 50 years after they “gained independence” from Spain.
Moving Toward Independence
Today in 1775, the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia. The men met with the intention to figure out the best way to protect the liberties of their respective colonies, independence or reconciliation with Great Britain. This was in direct response to the battles at Lexington and Concord from the previous month, the first battles of the War of Independence.
At this meeting, Congress authorized the raising of an army, printed money to pay for said army, and appointed George Washington its commander. The British responded to the Congress’ decisions, by declaring the colonies in a state of rebellion. They dispatched thousands of troops and ordered the closing of all colonial ports.
John Adams, the motivated lawyer from Massachusetts (where much of the rebellion had already occurred), felt that British abuses gave the colonies no choice. However, not all colonists felt this way yet, moderates and conservatives still felt strong opposition toward independence and would need to be convinced. Throughout the war, a minority of colonists remained loyal to Great Britain.
The road to independence was a long one. Two months after the meeting of the Second Continental Congress, in July 1775, John Dickinson of Pennsylvania drafted the Olive Branch Petition. The document affirmed the colonies’ loyalty to King George III and requested the king to renounce the previous acts of his ministers (those who had raised taxes on the colonies). The Second Continental Congress also issued a declaration denying that the colonies were planning to declare independence. Great Britain, knowing full well of the rebel army in place, did not attempt to marry the contradictions of the Congress. King George III refused to receive the Olive Branch Petition and British leaders were determined to destroy the colonies’ rebellion.
By the end of 1775, British Parliament had ended all trade with the colonies and ordered the Royal Navy to seize colonial merchant ships. Whether supported by all colonists or not, the path to independence had begun.
Who Was John Brown?
Today in 1800, John Brown was born. This seemingly unimportant birth led to the life of one of the most violent abolitionists in the United States. Frederick Douglass described Brown as “a white man who is in sympathy with the black man and is deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul as been pierced with the iron of slavery.”
Brown grew up to be a deeply religious Christian. Like many religious men, he placed importance on family. He was the father to twenty children. Brown tried to support this rather large family through a variety of ways: as a farmer, wool merchant, tanner, and land speculator. However, he was never able to find financial success, filing bankruptcy in his forties.
He believed, unlike the Southern planters, that God opposed slavery. Brown’s father had raised him in an Ohio district known for its antislavery views. Brown did not allow his financial woes to impact his antislavery cause. He and his wife raised an African American youth as one of their own children. He participated in the Underground Railroad. In 1851, he helped to found the League of Gileadites, an organization whose goal was to protect runaway slaves.
By the time Brown had reached his fifties, he began having visions of slave uprisings, imagining that racists would have to pay for their sins. He began to believe he was commissioned by God to make these visions a reality.
In August 1855, he joined his sons in Kansas. Due to the Compromise of 1850, Kansas’ population was able to choose if it would a free state or a slave state. The state held several elections, each compromised by many outsiders who filled the ballots. The Brown sons had gone there in an effort to keep Kansas from being a slave state. However, they suffered greatly in Kansas and requested their father to come to help them. The following year, pro-slavery activists burned and pillaged the free state community of Lawrence. Brown, ready for revenge, organized a militia. They visited the homes of pro-slavery men, dragged inhabitants into the night, and hacked five men to death with long-edged swords. Helping give the state the nickname, “Bleeding Kansas.”
After the murders, Brown fought in Kansas and Missouri for the remainder of the year. In 1857, he returned to the East and began to plot for a war against slavery in Virginia. On October 16, 1859, along with twenty-one other men, Brown raided a federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. He was captured, tried, and convicted of treason. Before receiving his sentence, Brown addressed the Court, “…Now if it be deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit: so let it be done.”
John Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859. Despite his horrible acts, Northerners spoke favorably of him. Thoreau said of him, “No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature.”
