David A. Morse Oral History Interview, July 25, 1977

Notice
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview.

RESTRICTIONS
This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Opened October, 1980
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

[1]

FUCHS: To start, would you relate when and where you were born and something about your education, and how you happened to come into the Government?

MORSE: Well, I was born May 31, 1907, in New York City and at the age of one was moved out to Somerville, New Jersey where I was raised in a small town, went to public school, and then in 1925 went to Rutgers College, as it was called then, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. I graduated in '29 and went then to the Harvard Law School

[2]

from which I graduated in 1932. In 1932, I went to Newark, New Jersey to work for a law firm as a clerk and was admitted to the bar immediately thereafter. In 1933, I was recruited by Nathan Margold, who was then the Solicitor of the Interior Department, to come and work on his staff as a young lawyer. I was then about 26 years of age. I'd been recommended to him by one of my former professors at the Harvard Law School, Felix Frankfurter, and a classmate of mine who was a very close friend, Herbert Marks, who was, at that point, working in Washington. I worked in the Interior Department from '33 until '35 when I became the General Counsel of the Petroleum Labor Policy Board in the Interior Department. This was rather interesting because the petroleum code of the NRA had been turned over to Harold Ickes, the then Secretary of the Interior, by Franklin D. Roosevelt for administration. As part of the petroleum code,

[3]

he had to set up a Petroleum Labor Policy Board which was one of the early efforts at implementing the labor code at the time, later incorporated in the Wagner Act. I became General Counsel of that outfit working under the chairmanship of Dr. William Leiserson. As a result of that, I was asked by Francis Biddle who was the first chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, and Calvin Magruder, his General Counsel, who'd been a professor of mine at the Harvard Law School, if I would join the NLRB and be the first Regional Attorney for that organization in the New York City, Connecticut and New Jersey area to be among these young lawyers at the time who would help test the constitutionality of the Wagner Act or the National Labor Relations Act as it was called. I agreed and moved, therefore, from Interior to New York to work for the NLRB for that purpose, and I stayed with the board until 1937. I left in 1937 because it was in April of that year that the constitutionality

[4]

of the Act had been determined by the United States Supreme Court, and I handled one of those cases which went to the Supreme Court called the Associated Press case. Charles Fahy was then the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board.

In 1937, when I resigned from the Government, I went back to Newark, New Jersey and became a partner in my old law firm with which I'd previously clerked. It was called Coult, Satz, Tomlinson, and Morse. We had an interesting group of men. One was Walter Sauer, who later came to Washington to become General Counsel, Chief Executive Officer, Vice President, Vice Chairman of the Board of the Export-Import Bank. He's still with them in a consulting capacity although he's now over age. I stayed with the law firm, practiced law, became one of the first impartial chairmen of the milk industry for the metropolitan area for New

[5]

York.

When Pearl Harbor occurred I enlisted into our Army, went to a training school in Florida in the Air Force. That was in April '42, and I became a lieutenant after finishing my course, went into the Air Force. I went overseas shortly thereafter to North Africa and was soon asked to act as the Chief of the Manpower Division of the Military Government operation that was going into Sicily, and was given the responsibility for preparing the decrees for General Eisenhower which would abolish the Fascist corporative syndical system. I did that job and went in on the invasion of Sicily, which was in '42; went up into Palermo, from there continued to Naples, and always in the same capacity, Chief of the Manpower Division of the Allied Military Government, the British and the Americans.

About 1942, some months after the invasion

[6]

when I was in Naples, I was ordered to England. I went to Schrivenham, which was an artillery school outside of London, to become part of a group that was preparing for the invasion of the continent of France. Again, because of my previous experience, they asked me to become part of the unit at the Supreme Allied Headquarters, called SHAEF, to advise on the labor aspects of what would become the Military Government in the occupied areas, on the theory that we were going to succeed in our invasion. Bob Murphy, I remember, Ambassador Murphy, was the political advisor to the Supreme Commander, Eisenhower. I was labor adviser to the General. We organized ourselves and some days after D-Day, sometime in 1944, I went into France, then Paris, and from there moved on up to Versailles; and from there to Frankfurt where I was the acting head of the Manpower Division of the Allied Military Government, what they called the Control Council

[7]

of Germany; composed of U.S., British, French, and the Russians. We were grouped into a Control Council, and I was dealing with the labor side as acting head until they could appoint a general to take over these responsibilities, which they eventually did when General Clay came over, sometime in '44 or early '45, I don't recall. He (General Frank McSherry) became then the head of the labor side or manpower side of the Control Council. I was then a lieutenant colonel and prepared at long last to return to the United States.

FUCHS: Was Leo Werts over there at that time? He was probably in a much lower capacity.

MORSE: Yes. Leo Werts was in the picture and my recollection is that he was part of my team and then stayed on after I left. A lot of people came in at that time, very good men for this operation -- a lot of whom came from

[8]

the Government on the civilian side. I had been through the military side. Joe Keenan came over just about that time to act as a labor adviser in this particular area. He was a trade union leader sent over by the Government. But I returned to the U.S. in '45, as I'd received a request from the Secretary of War, Robert Patterson, to return from Germany to become General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, which was a very sentimental journey for me due to the fact that I'd previously acted under Charles Fahy when he was General Counsel.

FUCHS: Who was Chairman at that time?

MORSE: Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board was Paul Herzog, and he had with him Gerard Reilly, who's now a judge here in the District of Columbia, and Jim Reynolds. It was interesting, this particular move on my part, because the day after I agreed to become General Counsel

[9]

and return to Germany for that post, I received a communication from Herbert Lehman, former Governor of New York, later Senator, then the Director General of UNRRA [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration], asking if I would become General Counsel of his organization. But I had to refuse that since I had, the day before, accepted the NLRB offer.

FUCHS: Were you chagrined about that?

MORSE: Well, I was happy at both opportunities. Of course I loved the Governor, so I was sorry not to have had the opportunity of working with him. On the other hand, the NLRB post was something that was very consistent with my experience. So I was pleased to do that; yet I was very honored to have had both opportunities, and happy that I was to leave the Army and return home. As a matter of fact, it was rather interesting when I came back, I received the Legion of Merit.

[10]

I don't mention it because I received the Legion of Merit, but it was rather nice because I was called over to the Pentagon and I was decorated there by General McSherry, who came back for that purpose and who had been the man who actually succeeded me as head of the U.S. Control Council Manpower Division.

My work at the NLRB was extremely interesting. It was for me an innovative period. It was a postwar period. It was still the Wagner Act, before the Act had been amended to be called the Taft-Hartley law. I made a tremendous effort with the Chairman to follow out President Truman's wishes, which were rather clear, and that was to improve the National Labor Relations Board's services to labor and management. I recall that very vividly because it was in connection with that objective of the President that I called the first conference that had ever been held by this agency or any other agency in Government

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of the attorneys that practiced in the labor field and before the NLRB. This was good because it gave the bar on the management side and on the labor side and the Government side, a chance to know each other, to exchange views with each other, become familiar with their respective problems and interests and the machinery and procedures of the National Labor Relations Board, and to try to weld that into some cohesive relationship that would have a positive impact on the public interest that we in the Government were attempting to serve; and that was, I think, a very good development. As a matter of fact, we received at the Board a great deal of positive support for that effort.

FUCHS: Did President Truman deal directly with Chairman Herzog or did he go through the General Counsel? How did his wishes become known other than through his speeches?

[12]

MORSE: They became known because he worked directly at that time with the Chairman of our board, Paul Herzog. It was an extremely important period for the labor side of the administration and as far as the NLRB was concerned we had to build a legal staff which had been practically decimated by World War II, and I remember I added more than sixty lawyers that were selected on a merit basis but with special preference for veterans. Rather interesting that point, because the President insisted and the chairman of the Board insisted that the recruitment be a merit recruitment, and there were absolutely no politics in it at that time. We picked men on the basis of their professional qualifications. I don't recall one instance where I had been asked by the White House or by the Chairman of the Board or by the trade union movement or employers, to place someone on my board for political purposes. That was

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very satisfactory. Paul Herzog did have very close relations with the President, yes.

FUCHS: What was Mr. Herzog's and your feelings about veteran's preference?

MORSE: Well, you have to look at everything in the light of the circumstances of the time. We'd just finished a bloody war, a very difficult one. A lot of men had gone abroad who had high professional skills, been overseas for a number of years and came back into a situation where they had to rebuild their careers and I think it was justified that we give preferential consideration to those men many of whom would come back handicapped and most of whom had a very difficult time re-orienting themselves. None of them were brought in, however, simply because they were veterans. We looked at them first because of the veterans' position, but if they didn't have the other qualifications, we

[14]

didn't take them. That's about it. We had no problem at that time about it. That was in the spirit of that particular time.

However, one thing that did happen at that time, Mr. Fuchs, that is rather interesting. You know we didn't have in our Government at that time any program to deal with international labor problems. I was working on the domestic side but I recall very vividly, I had been asked to come over to the Labor Department after I returned, while I was General Counsel of the Labor Board, to talk with various people about the labor aspects of Europe, about international labor problems: the politics of it, the Socialist developments, the Communist, the progressive developments, the liberal developments, the conservative developments; what this would mean to the future of Europe and to our relations with Europe. I remember talking at great length with a fellow called Dan [Daniel W.]

[15]

Tracy. Dan had been former president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. But at this time, when I was General Counsel, he was an Assistant Secretary of Labor under Lewis Schwellenbach who was the Secretary of Labor, and who came from the State of Washington. He had been a Federal judge, a United States Senator, and was very close to Harry Truman when he was in the Senate. He was one of the Senators referred to as a "young Turk" and very much in support of the New Deal and its legislation. I talked with Dan and then had a number of talks with Mr. Schwellenbach. I talked with the Secretary about the importance of the labor movement in Europe and especially to the United States and our future relations with the Western European countries from an economic and political point of view. I told him that I thought that it would be necessary and helpful, really vital, for the United States

[16]

to have someone in the U.S. Government authorized to be responsible for monitoring the labor developments in Europe and elsewhere in the world and if possible to influence those developments. I saw this very clearly as a result of my work during the war with the new free labor unions that were developing in Italy, in Germany, and in other parts of Western Europe; and I could see how important they would be to our future political relations with Europe and, of course, to the development of democracy in those countries. Actually, I recall having a long talk with Isador Lubin. He came to Frankfurt when I was there toward the end of my tour of duty in the Army. He'd been sent over by our President, Franklin D. Roosevelt. He had an ambassadorial rank, and he was doing a study there for the President. On that occasion I talked with him about this particular problem. I asked him if he wouldn't convey the issues to President Roosevelt,

[17]

which he said he would because he agreed very much with my views.

I mention this because, interestingly enough, a year after these conversations, sometime in 1946, I was in my house on 16th Street in Washington and the phone rang at night and it was a fellow by the name of Sylvester, who was the Chief of the Bureau for the Newark Evening News of New Jersey, in Washington. He said, "Dave, I just saw on the ticker that you've been appointed by the President of the United States to be the first Assistant Secretary of Labor for International Affairs. What have you got to say about it?"

I said, "Well, the first thing I've got to say about it is that this is the first I've heard about it. I'm really quite surprised and pleased, of course, because I think it's something which we need. Actually, I've been talking about that to various people in

[18]

the Government."

He said, "Well, the ticker says that you're going to be asked to establish a Division for International Affairs by the President."

I said, "Well, I'm delighted." I think I must have been recommended for that, Mr. Fuchs, by the Secretary of Labor, Schwellenbach, as a result of the talks I'd had with him before about the general problems. But obviously the appointment, as I learned later, had been made in consultation with the president of the American labor movement, William Green.

FUCHS: Now this was part of the reorganization which took place in the Labor Department after Mr. Schwellenbach was appointed, and I believe there were two others appointed Assistant Secretary the same time you were, "Mr. [Phillip] Hannah and Mr. [John] Gibson. Were you acquainted with them prior to this?

[19]

MORSE: No, that was a whole new team. There was one other chap; there was Governor Keen Johnson. He was a former Governor of Kentucky. He was appointed as part of this reorganization by the Secretary of Labor as Under Secretary of Labor. He was the first Under Secretary of Labor in the Department of Labor. John Gibson was appointed at the same time. He was from the CIO and Phil Hannah from Ohio, from the AFL. You recall that at that time the labor movement was split and I gather this was part of the effort on the part of the Administration to see to it that both sides of the labor movement were properly taken into account in the administration of our affairs. All of us were sworn in at the same time.

FUCHS: Have you reflections about Mr. Schwellenbach?

MORSE: Yes, I can tell you about that. I spent a

[20]

lot of time with him privately in his office. You see, I was the neutral, so-called public member of those chaps who were then made Assistant Secretaries of Labor. So if he had something that he wanted to discuss that involved both sides he would talk to me and, of course, talk with the Under Secretary. Even though my responsibilities were primarily international, I got drawn into discussions of the domestic scene. I was asked by the Secretary to deal with many ad hoc matters in areas not related to international affairs. My impressions of Schwellenbach are very personal. I thought he was a wonderful human being. I thought that he was a man that was better one to one than in groups. When you sat down and talked with him quietly he gave you his great experience. You could tell that this was a man who had been through a lot in his life as a judge, a Senator, and as a politician. When you got him before

[21]

larger audiences, he clammed up. It was a great effort for him, at this period of his life that we're talking about. I think it's mainly that he was very nervous. His hands would tremble. We'd go down to talk to large groups and it was a terrific effort for him. I began to see that this was because his health was failing him. I found that from the time I took office until I left, which was the day when he died -- which we'll talk about a little bit later -- he was a man in declining health. So he was not able to go to as many Cabinet meetings as he should. When he got to Cabinet meetings, I don't think he was as effective as he could have been. I think he isolated himself a great deal from his staff, even from the trade union movement, because he was conserving his strength. He would spend large periods away from the office and it was all a matter of health and nothing else. So, I think

[22]

one must consider him from a very compassionate point of view. He was a wise man; he was a very good man. He was not a very strong administrator; he was not even a good administrator. He didn't know how to dialogue with his top people. He didn't really know how to bring them together as a group and talk to them and hammer out policies and fix programs and delegate authority. I think the way you had to deal with Lew Schwellenbach at that time was to take initiatives yourself. Say, "Well, I've got this idea and I've got that idea, I think we ought to do this, I think we ought to do that and then move." If you would do that and if he liked the idea he'd give you the green light and you'd go ahead. But if you were the kind of fellow that didn't want to take initiatives, nothing would happen. The result was that Congress was taking things away from the Labor Department at that period; it was being

[23]

decimated. It was going through a very hard time. The morale of the Department was not good. Keen Johnson subsequently left as Under Secretary. It was, I think, 1947 when he left, and I was in Geneva at the time that I was called back then to take his place as Under Secretary. I became Under Secretary of Labor in 1947 -- that must have been in June of 1947.

We had very close relations. But then increasingly, his health deteriorated so that from the time I became Under Secretary, I doubt that he went to very many Cabinet meetings. I went to the Cabinet meetings on his behalf and tried to do the best I could to serve the interests of the Department and country at these meetings. I'd like to, if you don't mind, Mr. Fuchs, go back a little bit to how we went about creating this international department.

FUCHS: Who was handling international labor affairs

[24]

when you were having these conversations while you were still General Counsel?

MORSE: Well, that's a very good question because there was a complete vacuum. The Labor Department was not handling international affairs. When I was appointed Assistant Secretary of Labor for International Affairs to create the division, the first thing I did, of course, was to investigate just that question in the Department: who was handling international affairs?

FUCHS: How were relations conducted with the ILO into which we had entered in '34?

MORSE: Well, I went over to the Labor Department and, interestingly enough, I brought with me a fellow who had been my legal assistant at the National Labor Relations Board, Millard Cass. He stayed with me right on through my whole

[25]

period at the Labor Department. There were six people that I surrounded myself with professionally in order to get this division started and Millard Cass was one of them. The ILO, that you refer to, I couldn't find anybody that was handling that until I finished a couple of weeks of exhaustive study. We found that the representation was in the hands of an official by the name of John Gambs who was down the line in the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Women's Bureau (he worked with both of them). He had been going to ILO conferences. So when questionnaires and requests to go to meetings came into the Labor Department, they got routed to this chap. He'd answer the questionnaires and he would go to the meetings, or he would tell people there was a meeting and maybe he ought to go to it. It was hit or miss.

FUCHS: Did he attend the conferences?

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MORSE: He went to them or he would suggest people to go. And then they would pick people ad hoc to go. But there was no system, no bureau, no real procedure. It was handled ad hoc. Just one man. So we had not a very great impact in the work at that time. Of course, before the war we may have had. But I'm talking now about the postwar period. As far as that period is concerned that I'm talking about, there was nobody.

Now, actually it was just at that point that the Government began to have a labor attaché program. I recall that the first labor attaché had been appointed previously. It was Dan Horowitz. He's still in the Labor Department as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Labor for International Affairs. He was appointed in 1943. He was proposed by Isador Lubin. I often wonder if maybe that wasn't some kind of a direct result of the talk that I had

[27]

with Lubin when we were in Europe at that time; but it may have been before.

FUCHS: Was Lubin head of Labor Statistics at that time?

MORSE: Lubin then was still head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and acting as the adviser to the President in the White House. This was under Francis Perkins. The program of labor attaché, which now is a very important program, was actually started as an experiment in Chile back in 1943 with this fellow Horowitz. It was developed as a program in the Truman administration. It was never developed as a program in FDR's administration. They put a fellow here and they put a fellow there, but as a program it was not until Harry Truman came in. This program was actually resisted by all the Ambassadors except Claude Bowers who was our Ambassador in

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Chile. He accepted the program. It later developed that when I came into the Labor Department and began emphasizing the importance of this program that the State Department agreed that they would beef the program up. It was agreed by myself and State -- it was then Dean Acheson -- that appointments would be made by State for this program after consultations with myself as the Assistant Secretary of Labor for International Affairs. It was actually in 1945 that Sam Berger, who later became one of our Ambassadors in Vietnam, became a labor attaché in London. He was actually with Averell Harriman who headed the coal-steel mission in England. That's the way this labor attaché program began and it is now a going program administered by the State Department in consultation with the Labor Department.

FUCHS: You considered this one of your more significant

[29]

enterprises while you were Assistant Secretary?

MORSE: I think a significant thing was the creation of a proper unit to effectively service the International Labor Organization. Another was the strengthening and development of the program of labor attachés. The next development, I think, that was significant was becoming the first member from the Labor Department of the Foreign Service Board in the State Department, where I tried to play a significant role in formulating policies for our Foreign Service officers -- recruitment and selection of people. Another, I think, significant activity had to do with the Marshall plan.

The Marshall plan came along in the postwar period and Paul Hoffman, you remember, was appointed the administrator of it. And the President himself, and Dean Acheson, who was

[30]

Under Secretary of State, asked me if I would use my good offices to help Paul Hoffman become fully accepted by the American labor movement, so that we could have the support of the American labor movement for the Marshall plan. I arranged for Paul to be invited to most of the large AF of L and CIO meetings throughout the country, the executive committee meetings, where he addressed these people, got acquainted with them, and talked with them about the Marshall plan. Through that I think I did make some contribution to the work and the political support in this country of the Marshall plan. I think otherwise the labor movement support would not have been quite that great, and it was one of the key elements in the support of the Marshall plan.

I also created something called the Trade Union Advisory Committee on International Affairs. I found that with the labor movement being split between the CIO and AF of L, it was

[31]

extremely difficult for me to function in international programs or to help the President. I hit on the idea of setting up an advisory committee and I consulted with Phil Murray, who was then the head of the CIO and Bill Green, who was head of the AF of L, on the concept. They agreed this was a good thing and they put their top people in this committee which I chaired; and we would meet regularly to discuss problems together with the CIO and the AF of L. This may not seem like a very significant step to you now, but it was a great step forward then when they were hardly talking to each other. They came, their top people, people like Jim Carey on the CIO side, Matty Wohl on the AF of L side. I would ask what position we should take on issues in the ILO, what position should we take on the Marshall plan, what position should we take on the development of free trade unions

[32]

throughout the world, what position should we take on labor attaché programs, what position should we take on the Truman Doctrine in Greece and so on. Through this mechanism we always got a unified labor movement position on the international side of President Truman's efforts. It was very interesting. At this time I brought in with me more and more good people. A fellow by the name of Thacher Winslow became one of my assistants with Millard Cass. Philip Kaiser was one of my assistants; I brought him in. You know Philip, he's now our Ambassador to Hungary and so on. I'll talk a little bit more about him later. So I began to build up a good staff to help me on these matters. At that time the CIO was not the representative at any of the ILO meetings. It was the AF of L. There was a big fight going on constantly about representation. Through this advisory committee I got them to understand the procedural and legal aspects of this and accept

[33]

the problems, even to the extent that they would send some CIO people over along with the AF of L people to various ILO meetings. That went a long way toward creating a better atmosphere in the Labor Department and in the labor movement of our country.

Another thing that happened during this period was interesting. I got the agreement of the Secretary of Labor and the President that I should invite periodically the labor commissioners from all the different states of the United States to come to Washington to discuss their problems. Now, again, that doesn't seem like much to you now, although I'm not sure how much of that is being done now. But at that time it was considered quite a revolutionary step to get these chaps together. They all came, and we discussed their problems. They learned from each other; they got to know each other; they got to know the

[34]

differences in their techniques of administration. They examined whether certain ILO conventions should be ratified or shouldn't be ratified. Very much to their surprise they found that the minimum standards of the ILO reflected in conventions or recommendations were in most instances much higher than the legislation in the respective sates of our own country. So they went back stimulated to try to improve their own legislative position. This was particularly true in the areas of occupational health and safety. Which was a problem then as it is today.

I mentioned before the question of the Truman Doctrine. Would you like me to say something about that?

FUCHS: Yes, I would.

MORSE: It comes to my mind as something rather interesting. You know, again, with the split labor movement -- and the CIO at that time was

[35]

supposed to be very, very radical. They were members of the WFTU, which was headed by Louis Saillant, a French Socialist who was oriented toward the Communists, and the Russians were in it. Of course, the AF of L wouldn't have anything to do with that body and they would have liked very much to see the CIO get out of it, which the CIO eventually did, of course. Now, at the time, Mr. Truman was thinking of launching his doctrine which concerned the vacuum created by the British withdrawal from Greece. Dean Acheson asked me to see him. He was then Under Secretary of State and he said, "Dave, I've got this problem. The President is going to launch this doctrine and it's absolutely vital that we have the support from the day it's launched of the American labor movement, and that means the CIO and the AF of L. You have to get this done for the President."

I said, "Well, Dean, that's not easy.

[36]

You'll have to help me."

He said, "What do you want?"

I said, "Well, I'll get them together at the Labor Department but I want you to come secretly to this meeting so the press doesn't learn about it and explain to them as Americans the significance of the doctrine to the American public and to the world and to our foreign policy. See if you can get them to agree that they will endorse it."

"Well," he said, "you've got yourself a deal."

I fixed the date and I got the Trade Union Advisory Committee together. I told them this was an emergency meeting, very secret, I remember Dean Acheson coming over and coming in through the back door of the Labor Department so the press wouldn't see him. He addressed them, talked with them, explained the President's "Truman Doctrine," briefed all of them, and we

[37]

got their support. I think that was an interesting example of a technique in Government that worked. I considered that a major achievement. Another important achievement at that time -- you've got to remember we're talking about a period when Europe was in a shambles -- was the reconstruction of Europe with the Marshall plan. We were people who reckoned that we knew about all there was to know at that time in the free world about productivity and productivity techniques. So we got the Europeans, through the Marshall plan, to develop productivity councils and committees -- the French, the Belgians, the Dutch, the Italians, the devastated countries, the British -- so that workers and employers would organize teams to improve the production in their countries, latch on to the Marshall plan, and help it to accomplish its objectives. As part of that we got them to come to the United States on a systematic basis to meet with our

[38]

labor and industry people, to take advantage of our technology and see if we could learn from them and they, particularly, from us. I thought that this productivity committee program for the development of Europe as part of the Marshall plan effort, was a very significant thing. They were the sort of thing, Mr. Fuchs, that wouldn't really happen if you didn't have a branch in the Labor Department that was worrying about these problems. Because it's not the kind of thing that Foreign Service fellows in the State Department would be thinking about -- it's not in their discipline or experience -- nor would they have the contacts for it; which demonstrated the value of the establishment of this division in the Labor Department. I started the program with the agreement of the Commerce Department, the Secretary of Labor and the State Department. I talked a great deal with Bill

[39]

Foster then. He was the Under Secretary of Commerce at that time. He was a Republican in that spot and a very good chap. Of course, he had a great career afterwards, as you know, but he was Under Secretary of Commerce at that time, I think, working originally with Averell Harriman. Averell was the Secretary of Commerce. So all of this was a rather unique role which did not exist before the creation of the office of Assistant Secretary of Labor for International Affairs. I'll tell you one thing, though, Mr. Fuchs., that your question brings to my mind. I think that if we in the Labor Department, or if I or Schwellenbach or any of us, were able to make a contribution in the areas that I've been referring to -- and there are many others where I think we did make a contribution -- it was because I was given direct access to and had very cordial relations with President Truman himself, Secretary Marshall himself, Under Secretary Acheson, Bill

[40]

Foster, Averell Harriman, with Forrestal of the Defense Department, Secretary of Defense, other top officials of the Government. You see, this was a new animal that had been created, and I'd come into it and, because Schwellenbach was the kind of man he was and not so available, not so accessible, I was given the mandate to get things going. I got it going and there was no problem about cutting across lines. It was welcomed and they became my friends and the President himself gave it the signal by saying in the Cabinet, especially a bit later, when I was under Secretary of Labor, that he wanted full cooperation on these efforts by the members of the Cabinet. Jim Forrestal, for example: I used to go up and spend hours with him. He'd say now, "What is the American labor movement? What kind of a guy is Bill Green? Who is George Meany? What do they do? Are they subversive? Are they good Americans? Are they patriotic?

[41]

Are they going to have strikes and bring our country down? What is this animal?"

I explained that these were great Americans, salt-of-the-earth people. Bill Green, George Meany, Phil Murray, all these fellows are great American citizens that believe in our system. They are trying to improve and strengthen it. The best thing you can do Mr. Forrestal in Defense is to get to know them, work with them, help them, cooperate, and these chaps did. So, I was doing that kind of a job. Of course, I was much younger then. I talk with a lot of enthusiasm now, I know, but I had a lot more then, and all of this rubbed off and I think was useful. Nobody questioned this activity on my part; that was a great help. There was nothing bureaucratic about any of this.

FUCHS: Schwellenbach really didn't interfere at all with your foreign relations activities?

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MORSE: No, not a bit. Just so long as I kept him informed. Every time I came back from a meeting I'd run in to see him. He'd be stretched out on the sofa in the back office, tired. He was a sick man. I'd sit next to him and he'd say, "Well, Dave what's happened?" And I would tell him. He'd say, "Well, that's just great. Keep it up." Everything I did, I did in his name. My problem, and I think it was the correct thing, was to make sure that what I was doing was in the Secretary's name. It was in his name. It was not a phony. It's just that he couldn't -- well, it wasn't for him to deal with actually. After all, he had me there. I was doing it on his behalf and that I think was appreciated by him, and, I think, by the President.

So that would, then, bring me -- just going telescopically through things rather rapidly -- up until about 1947. Some of what I've been telling you includes 1947 because it was then

[43]

that I was appointed Under Secretary of Labor, in which position I continued until the Secretary's death in 1948, which was sometime in June. Then by operation of law I became Acting Secretary of Labor. I was elected Director General of the ILO the day before he died. I went over to Geneva and took up my duties as Director General on about the 7th or 8th of September, 1948.

FUCHS: Do you have any further observations about your attendance at Cabinet meetings? I imagine these were all either as Under Secretary or as Acting Secretary?

MORSE: Yes, I have quite a few observations about that. In the first place, it was interesting to observe the President in the Cabinet, very informal but dignified. We always assembled in the Cabinet Room, waited about 15 minutes, then the President came in. We stood until he was seated

[44]

and then we sat down. He would start off one of two ways, as I recall -- and I went to most of the Cabinet meetings during this period, a couple of years -- either he would talk about something that was bothering him, a particular subject and that would take up practically the whole meeting; the revolution in Colombia or some kind of uprising in some other part of Latin America, problems in Europe, just talk about it. What do you think about this? And Secretary Marshall, if it were foreign affairs, might talk about it. If it was a large enough issue that was the Cabinet discussion. Always on Friday. He didn't necessarily go around the table saying, "What do you think about it?" If it was a big issue on foreign affairs he would say what he thought and the Secretary of State would say what he thought. He wouldn't say, "What do you think, Jim," or "What do you think, Dave," or what do you think -- he called everybody

[45]

by his first name. When he didn't have anything that aggravated him particularly, although there was always concern about a lot of problems, he'd go around the table. He'd come to me and he would say, "Well, what about the labor situation? What have you got that you'd like to say as far as the Labor Department is concerned?" I generally was briefed on the economic situation in the country as it related to labor, unemployment, employment. I always had a good briefing from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In addition the President was very much concerned about labor-management relations in the country. He would ask about our statistics on strikes and what it looked like on the horizon in terms of basic industry and disputes. Here we had a bit of a jurisdictional problem, because John Steelman was in the White House as his adviser. John had been head of the Federal Mediation Service and went over to the White

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House; a very good man, John. He became Labor Adviser to the President, as well as other things. So Truman was getting advice from John and he was supposed to be getting advice from Schwellenbach and Schwellenbach was getting it from me. But I had one advantage over John and that is that I could speak at the Cabinet meetings because I was a Cabinet officer. But John had a greater advantage over all of us because he could see the President every day, being one of his advisers in the White House. It was not good. I think, as I look back, that this duplication was a mistake. As I say, I had tremendous respect for him; he did great work, very loyal to the President, very effective, a great mediator. But I think it created a perfectly natural tendency for all the labor leaders and industrial leaders wanting to go directly to the White House. So when there was a dispute that was major why go to the Labor

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Department, why go to the Mediation Service, when you can go right to the President. And John being an old mediator found it very difficult not to engage in preventive medicine, and that is to call the boys in and say, “Look, don’t create a problem by striking,” so you got him into this thing. That would cut across the Labor Department, cut across the Federal Mediation Service and everything else, and that was not much appreciated. Now what we did, however, on our side was try to deal with that. You know, when you have a heart attack what happens is that the blood vessels, I suppose, try to get around the damaged area so that you can live. That’s what we did. As a result of this I recommended to the Secretary of Labor, Mr. Schwellenbach, that we ought to create in the Department-- and I consulted Paul Herzog, I remember, on that-- a committee composed of Chairman

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of the Labor Board, Chairman of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, Chairman of the National Mediation Board, and the Secretary of Labor, with myself, as Under Secretary, acting in his place when he couldn't be there, and when he was there acting like the secretary of the committee in order to coordinate the labor policies of the country. Now that, I thought, would help us vis-a-vis John, because then we could keep John filled in, get him kind of coordinated into that and it would make our position stronger at the Cabinet. We were the only members of that group in the Cabinet. So that when we spoke in the Cabinet we could not only be speaking for the Labor Department but for all these agencies. I think that was useful. We got to know each other better. We did rationalize our policies to the extent that you could. You couldn't rationalize a quasi-judicial body but you could get their

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input in terms of overall policy. So that was the problem and that was what we did to try to overcome it.

FUCHS: Did you agree with the decision to move the Conciliation Service out of the Labor Department? I think that was at about the time you went into the Labor Department.

MORSE: Yes, it was just about that time.

FUCHS: Did you think that was a good move?

MORSE: Well, I didn't think it was such a great move, no, because I thought it was unnecessary to create an additional bureaucracy to cope with labor-management problems and I thought it would make coordination more difficult. As it worked out it hasn't been so bad because, you know, it's a highly specialized unit and if you've got a strong Secretary of Labor it has to deal with the Secretary of Labor anyway,

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and if you follow this concept of coordination you overcome the difficulties. I think it becomes a personal matter and I don't think it has been proven to be a bad thing. But at the time, as I recall, I was against it. We were having so many problems anyway. They were taking the Bureau of Employment Security out of the Labor Department, they were taking the Mediation Service out of the Labor Department, Schwellenbach was sick, John Steelman was over in the White House. We were becoming skeletonized, atrophied, and yet we had the Cabinet responsibility for dealing with the labor problems in the United States. We finally came to the conclusion the best thing to do about that was to bring all of the agencies in periodically, which we did. I think that served a certain purpose, but there were great difficulties in that, yes.

FUCHS: Did you find opposition in any of the Departments

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to your programs? I gather that the State Department cooperated quite fully with you. Did any of the other Departments?

MORSE: The State Department cooperated fully, Agriculture and Commerce fully, and that's because of personal relations. We had Bill Foster, who was Under Secretary of Commerce; he was great in respect of Commerce. He was really left to run the Commerce Department. He was marvelous. He never did a thing without consulting me as Under Secretary of Labor. Then he'd have conferences with industrial leaders at White Sulphur Springs or wherever they have them every once in a while, and he would call me and I'd go over and have lunch with him. We'd talk about his agenda, what should the labor input be, what would be the labor-management thing, what did I think about it from a national manpower point of view, and so

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on. We had the head of the embryonic HEW at that time in the image of Oscar Ewing who then headed the Federal Security Agency. I worked very closely with him, which reminds me of something else I must tell you about in a moment.

We had all of these relations established and working, and I must say, Mr. Fuchs, we had, all of us, very good cooperation, and very good cooperation from labor. The difficulty was on the political side. I'll talk about that later when Harry Truman decided to run for President, but that's a little bit later. Now, I can say this to you; all of us were working awfully hard to give the President the kind of political support he needed and what we hoped would help him become President again, and I'd like to talk to you about that a little bit.

FUCHS: Are you speaking of the policy group that

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you met with?

MORSE: Oh, you're familiar with that? Well, you've heard all about that; I needn't go into it.

FUCHS: I'd like to talk about that, and I'd like to ask questions.

MORSE: Well, this might be a good place to stop for today. Because that's going to take an hour to talk about.