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Notice Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview. RESTRICTIONS Opened April, 1972
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Oral History Interview with
February 2, 1971 by Jerry N. Hess HESS: To begin this morning Mr. Keenan, would you give me a little of your personal background; where were you born, where were you raised and what positions have you held? KEENAN: I was born in the city of Chicago, November 5, 1896. I spent all of my adult life in Chicago and I attended grammar school in Chicago. I went to night school for awhile and to Lewis Institute and St. Ignatius College. I had a number of jobs before I started my apprenticeship as an electrician. I was a messenger boy for a ladies hat firm, and I worked in the factory of a ladies hat firm. I was enrolled as an apprentice in IBEW Local 134 in 1914. I started my apprenticeship with the Chicago Telephone Company and stayed with that company after becoming a journeyman in 1920. I then transferred to construction work and was in the construction industry working, as an electrician does, for a number of firms. I became an officer in Local 134, as an inspector. Then I became Recording Secretary in 1925 and held that position until 1951. I was elected secretary of the Chicago Federation of Labor to succeed a great leader out there, Eric Neckols, in 1937. From then on I had various jobs. My entrance in the Government was in 1940 when I was called by Daniel Tracy, our International President, who in turn turned me over to Sidney Hillman, who was one of the seven members of the National Defense Council. Sidney Hillman represented labor in that council, and I became his assistant, representing the AF of L. John Owens of the miners represented the CIO and a gentleman by the name of Mr. [Timothy] Shea represented the railroads. I served as Hillman's assistant until the Defense Council was reorganized in 1941 as the Office of Production Management, and then that was dissolved and they set up the War Production Board. I became an assistant to Wendell Lund, who was the director for labor in the original setup. Later it was changed and they made two vice presidents, with fulltime duties. My title was Vice President in Charge of Labor Production. Clint [Clinton S] Golden was named Vice President in Charge of Manpower. My association there brought me in contact with nearly all of the military and other agencies, as far as construction was concerned, and I developed a friendship, through our working relationships, with General [Lucius] Clay and Admiral [Arthur Granville] Robinson. When General Clay was made Military Governor of Germany he asked me to go with him as labor advisor. I spent, off and on, about three years in Germany. HESS: What were your main duties in Germany? KEENAN: Reorganizing, and trying to relocate the labor leaders that were disposed of in 1933, finding them, bringing them back to their towns in the American zone, and using them as the means of reorganizing the trade unions in the American zone. HESS: Were they difficult to locate? KEENAN: Well, they could be... HESS: Did you locate very many? KEENAN: Well, yes, we located most of those that were alive. They were under heavy restrictions when they were arrested in 1933 on May 1 or May 2. They were given certain instructions. Many left the country, and they started to come back. One of the outstanding men in that group was a fellow by the name of Fritz Turnow. He was a member of the Reichstag and was truly representative of the trade union movement. And he was able to escape. They had arrested him one night and probably there was a slip between the lip and the cup and he was released on his own recognition. Then he was spirited out of the country and he lived most of this time, I think, in Sweden and in England. And he returned and became the first secretary of the DGB when it was reorganized in 1948. HESS: Did you have any particular difficulties in reestablishing the trade union movement after the war? KEENAN: Not at all. Clay gave me a free hand. And he allowed me to reorganize the unions along the United States line. I knew nothing about Germany when I went there, nothing at all. But with Father [Edmund] Walsh and Miss [Florence] Thorne of the AFL, she was in research, I had a chance to meet with Stennis, who was there. Ed Stennis I think his name was, he was with the Haverford College. I had a chance to talk with [Heinrich] Bruening, I think it was, he was at Harvard. And there was another man I think was at Knox College. And when they read about me taking this appointment with Clay they immediately called me and we made arrangements to meet. They gave me a background. Stennis was the son of one of the great industrialists of that country, prior to Hitler. And so through these people, I got a breakdown on how the unions were operating over there. You had the Christian unions, you had the Democratic unions, you had the Einheit unions, you had these Communist unions. And then they had the Works Council that fitted in and kind of reduced the effectiveness of the trade unions as an organization. So, anyhow, I got all that advice and went to Clay and told him what I had in mind and he said, "You go ahead." Well, that meant that I had to talk to the Democrats. And I talked to the Christian unions, and to Cardinal Falharper, who was the titular head of the Christian unions in Germany. [Kurt] Schumacher was in the English zone, Cardinal Falharper was in our zone, and I talked to the leaders at that time because we hadn't had them tied together in 1945-1946, but we made the tie in 1947-1948. And I think it was in 1947 we, the British and the Americans, agreed and they allowed our form of unionism to be used also in the English zone. HESS: Was there anything of this nature going on in the Russian zone at this time? KEENAN: Well, we never could find out what was going on in the Russian zone. In the Russian zone, the Russians applied their system, and the only labor law that we got real support on was the Works Council and they pushed the Works Council Law through almost immediately. But they had a reason for that because they knew they had no chance of taking over, but they could be very effective in the Works Council and they did cause a lot of trouble in the coal mining areas. Most of these unions had these old leaders. When we found them they were up in years, sixty, sixty-five, seventy. Well, Turnow was sixty-seven and Hans Bechler was older than that. He became the first George Meany of Germany. And you take the miners. A fellow by the name of [August] Schmidt, he was well over seventy. And we had a young fellow there by the name of Argott, who was the vice president. He was a fellow of about twenty, thirty years old. He was an out and out Communist and he really gave us some hell. He had these floating gangs of pickets that went to these mines. And we needed coal -- it was 1945-1946, the winter of 1945-1946 was one of the worst years. And we needed coal to run equipment, run these steam engines, and run the plants. But we needed it, and also the railroads. And they caused a lot of trouble in that. HESS: What methods could you use at that time to keep the Communists from infiltrating and taking over? KEENAN: No way. They had the majority. The only thing we could do -- I suppose if it got bad enough -- it never got that serious, but I suppose if it had we would have thrown them in jail, which they didn't mind. HESS: When you wanted to discuss something, would you take it directly to the General, or were there people on the staff that you used? KEENAN: Directly to Clay, and then he gave me an entree to all of his administrative people that I needed to carry out the job I was over there to do. HESS: Moving back just a little bit, but at the time that you were at the War Production Board, two very important men were there at that time: Donald M. Nelson, who was chairman, and then later, Julius Krug. KEENAN: I worked very closely with them. HESS: What do you recall about those two men, and what kind of men were they? KEENAN: I think Donald Nelson was a great American, one of the finest. He had a lot of courage and we are lucky he did, because I'm afraid if it wasn't for Donald Nelson this whole operation would have been turned over to the military and they'd have had a free hand. But he fought them off and he brought in people to help him. Some of them left him. They just became entranced when these military people would bring them in and show them the tanks, and the guns, and the planes, and the carriers. And it seemed to me, they just lost their balance as far as trying to keep the civilian economy going under trying war times. Now, Krug was brought in later, when Donald had to resign. He and I worked for two and a half years, because he headed a branch that was very important, the utilities, and the gas, the gas and oil. And being in the electrical business, and with the great construction going on, we met very, very -- well, we used to meet daily. He had an assistant who I worked with very much, Ed Falk, and between them, prior to becoming chairman, I worked with them very, very closely. HESS: Did you ever have any occasion to work with him when he was Secretary of the Department of Interior? KEENAN: Yes, I worked with him quite a bit then. HESS: Do you recall any instances in which you may have worked with him to help illustrate your relationship? KEENAN: Well, he used to come to me on all of these labor problems. He'd come talk to me whenever he got into trouble, and I think the closest we ever worked was in the first coal mine strike when he was Secretary of Interior, when President Truman set up that five cents for their pension fund. And I worked with him quite closely day after day, helping where I could at that time. HESS: Did he take your recommendations, do you recall? KEENAN: Oh, yes, he and I -- he was a pretty liberal guy in his own right, so he didn't need much prodding. He might riot go as far as I would suggest, but he was out, in many cases, as far as I was, in our interest in getting something done. HESS: In the first couple of years of the Truman administration, there was quite a bit of labor strife. Mr. Truman was threatening to take over the railroads and things of that nature. What was your opinion of Mr. Truman's early handling of labor matters, say the first year or so? KEENAN: Well, the first year or so I think he had bad advice. HESS: Who was giving him the bad advice? KEENAN: Well, he had some bad guys around. I can't say, but I think that [Charles] Sawyer and [John] Snyder and a number of others...I don't know whether they fully understood what these questions were. But I'm sure that in his first decision, you know, that he was right. I feel that... HESS: In his initial reaction? KEENAN: I think in 1947, the first tax bills. He vetoed the first tax bill and then they watered it down a little and he signed the second. I think he would have been far better off if he had vetoed both of them. HESS: What are your earliest recollections of Mr. Truman? KEENAN: Well, my earlier recollections were with the War Production Board when he was chairman of the Truman Committee. I think it was the greatest contribution to the war that one could imagine. If he had been a publicity hunter, he could have exposed some things that would have had this whole country on its ear, but he didn't. When he went out and made these investigations, he called the people in that were responsible and forced them to take some action. I think it's a gory story that shouldn't be told. I think the records of the Truman Committee's hearings are documented. It's there for the people to read. HESS: Did you ever attend any of the hearings of the Truman Committee? KEENAN: Oh yes. HESS: Do you recall any particular... KEENAN: I took part in one. HESS: Which one? KEENAN: I was involved in a case in Detroit, where John Lewis took after me for some of the actions I had taken in a bad strike up there. But I want to say I didn't have to appear. Mr. Hillman went to the committee and said I was his employee, he was in close consultation with me, and that he, in so many words, agreed with what I had done. So, I never had to appear; I never had to testify. And then I was in part of one that came out of the Truman hearings, the Consolidated Vultee case I think it was -- no, North American Aviation in Dallas and I think -- I know I was a part of it, but whether that came under the Truman Committee or not, with that airplane manufacturing plant in New York two Greeks, brothers, were running. What the hell's the name? [Henry J.] Kaiser finally took over the management, the operation of it. And it already had a bad production record, and well, it was one of the sad affairs that constituted that whole war period. HESS: How instrumental do you think Mr. Truman's handling of the War Investigation Committee was to his eventually receiving the vice-presidential nomination in 1944? KEENAN: I thought he was a great guy. Everybody could trust him. You could go and talk to him and he wasn't looking for publicity, he was looking to get the job done. I'm sure if somebody else had been the chairman, and they exposed the characteristics of the war, in leaking these things, it would have been very, very upsetting to the American people. HESS: There were a number of people in the labor movement who were disappointed in 1944 when Mr. Roosevelt did not choose Mr. [Henry A.] Wallace again. What was your view? KEENAN: Well, I was with Truman from the start. Through a very dear friend of mine, Herb [Herbert] Rivers, who knew, who was very close to Truman back in the Pendergast days -- they were both part of the Pendergast organization -- and through Herb, while Truman was Senator, we had occasion to go over and have lunch and I got to know him. In 1944, Bob [Robert] Hannegan came to me when I went out -- I was a delegate from Chicago, although I couldn't serve, because I was working for the War Production Board -- and asked me to talk to President [William] Green, and I met President Green. Hannegan was trying to convince Mayor [Edward J.] Kelly and Mayor [Frank] Hague and the leader from New York, and one other, that Truman was the candidate. In other words, was a real candidate. HESS: Did you have any difficulty convincing them? KEENAN: Them? HESS: Yes. KEENAN: Well, they were -- well, I didn't have anything to do with that. That was Hannegan, and Hannegan asked me to... HESS: What did President Green say though, when you talked to him? KEENAN: He told me that he had committed himself to [Alben] Barkley and as long as Barkley was in the race, he was for Barkley, but his second choice would be Truman. HESS: What did he say about Wallace? KEENAN: Well, he was opposed to Wallace. Generally the labor movement, the AF of L in particular, was opposed to Wallace. There was a kind of -- that was a bad period and Wallace was sort of a lefty. And I would say that there was a general feeling, in the AF of L, let me put it that way, not the CIO, against Wallace. And another thing was that most of the labor people were loyal to Roosevelt and once they found out it was Roosevelt's desire to have somebody else, I think then they went along, were willing to accept whomever Roosevelt wanted. And by the time we got in the convention in 1944 that thing was pretty well wrapped up. The sides already had been chosen. I mean for -- you probably know more about this than I. It was supposed to have been alleged that President Roosevelt brought in [James] Byrnes as the Assistant President during the war. He had to leave the Supreme Court, and he was promised the vice-presidency. And the group that I mentioned, Hague, [William S.] Flynn I think was in there, [David L.] Lawrence, Kelly in Chicago, they objected strenuously. I think that it was pretty well set for Byrnes. HESS: What were their main objections? KEENAN: I think the main one, he was a former -- he had been a Catholic, and had changed his religion. I think that was the only -- and being a southerner. HESS: Being a southerner, which at that time was sort of anti-labor, is that right? KEENAN: Anti-labor and anti-colored. HESS: But you think that the fact that he had once been a Catholic and changed to the Episcopal Church was the predominate reason that these men felt that he should not receive the nomination? KEENAN: May have been in their cases. May have been in their -- I don't know. But they felt that it would hurt their Catholic vote which was very important to those five states, that was New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio and Illinois, and probably two or three others. HESS: If they lost the Irish Catholic vote up there, they could forget about the election. KEENAN: Well, it was the Polish too. HESS: Polish? KEENAN: Polish. HESS: Ethnic. KEENAN: The ethnic groups. HESS: What now is called the ethnic groups. KEENAN: That's right. It was the Catholic vote that they were concerned about. HESS: All right, Mr. Roosevelt passed away on April the 12th of 1945. Where were you at the time that you heard of the death of President Roosevelt and what were your impressions? KEENAN: Well, it was a very memorable day for me. We had a bad strike in the movie studios and we were flying out on a special plane, an Army plane, to try to get that straightened out. And also, we had a meeting with the airplane companies out there. They had practically discontinued production of military aircraft. We didn't know at that time how long the war would last, although we were pretty sure that the German end of it was almost over. And these airplane plants were closing down, and we were going out to explore the possibility of what could be done as far as reconversion. So, we went out and landed at Douglas' airport. Donald Douglas came up the ramp and told us that they had just got a flash that Roosevelt died at Warm Springs. Well, a pall went over everything. Although I knew... I was in the campaign of 1944, I was quite active, and one day they brought a group of us in to see him, talk to him. Well, this was in September and he was just the picture of death that day. The thing that impressed me that day was that he was in a chair, his wheelchair, and he had the braces off, his legs were hanging loose, he was drawn, and any of us that day in that meeting, knew it was just a matter of time. So, it wasn't a great surprise to me. HESS: Do you recall anything about Senator Truman's effort in the campaign of 1944? KEENAN: What he did? HESS: Yes. He made a few campaign trips, too. Did you travel with him? KEENAN: I didn't travel with him. I didn't do any traveling in those days. I generally went to spots: St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, those are a few of the spots. HESS: More in the nature of advanced preparation? KEENAN: No, no, this was to line up our labor people. HESS: Well, that's what I mean; advanced preparation for the appearance of the President. KEENAN: Well, and also there were their own meetings. Their own meetings which were tied with the presidential campaign. HESS: All right. Now since you had met Mr. Truman before this time, upon hearing of President Roosevelt's death, what kind of job did you think this new man was going to do? KEENAN: Well, I thought -- thought from my experience with the Truman Committee that basically he was all right. He was HESS: Do you think labor was... KEENAN: I knew he was an American and I knew that he had courage and that's all I cared about. HESS: Did you think that labor would fare pretty well under him? KEENAN: Oh yes. I never gave it a thought. I thought that we were mostly responsible for him and he'd be all right. His background, everything pointed that way. HESS: What do you recall of the fight in the 80th Congress dealing with the Taft-Hartley Act? KEENAN: I wasn't here. I was in Germany all that time. HESS: All right. Now, after (this is getting ahead of our story just a little bit), but after 1948 when the 81st Congress came in, there was an effort to repeal the Taft-Hartley Act. You were back by that time, is that right? KEENAN: I was administrator of Labor's League for Political Education, so you.... HESS: When did you take over that, what date? KEENAN: Well, I was in Germany when they passed the Taft-Hartley Act. And I came home, I got home sometime in September, and I went to the AF of L -- well, I stopped in New York and met some friends, and stopped in Chicago. I was still secretary of the Federation on leave, and then went out for the AF of L convention in San Francisco. There were about sixty-five resolutions, different phases, or, yes, different phases and different objectives as far as these resolutions were concerned. They appointed a committee at that convention to take these different resolutions and draft one resolution, setting up a political arm. So, I came home and was going back to Germany. Clay wanted me to go back for those last six months. That was the time of the monetary reform and the airlift. He wanted to clean up this whole area over in Germany and wanted me to work with the trade unions for the last six or seven months. Well, I came back to the Chicago Federation of Labor and I had to make plans. I had moved back from Germany, but intended to go over there for two or three months. And I got a call from -- the first call I got was from Dan Tracy; he was on the committee to draft this resolution. And he wanted to know if I would consider coming in here to handle the new political arm. And I talked to him about it, and before anything was firmed up I got another call from him and he told me that I would receive a call from George Harrison and George Meany. So, they asked me then if I would take care of the Middle West, working out of Chicago, and it happened that the day they called me was the day the council, or the executive board of the Chicago Federation of Labor as meeting. I went to the board and they said, "Sure," it was okay. Well, it was only maybe a week, it was between Christmas and New Years, I remember that, they asked me to come in again. So, I came to Washington this time and they wanted to know if I wouldn't take the job temporarily, because the plan was to get some outstanding political figure to head it. The three names that they had at that time were Jim [James M] Mead of New York, and -- no, Jim Mead, Bob [Robert M., Jr.] La Follette, he had been defeated that year I think, and Wheeler of Montana. HESS: Burton K. KEENAN: Burton K. Wheeler. Well, they rocked along, rocked along, rocked along, and they couldn't get anybody. So then I got another call in February. They called me to Florida, and they asked me if I wouldn't come into Washington and take the job temporarily. So, then I had to go back to Chicago and work it out, and I came here sometime in March or April of 1948. Started as temporary director of Labor's League for Political Education. I was only here a few days when I was called by Gael Sullivan who was very close to the President and asked if I would go to the White House. I went over to the White House. I had a long talk with the President, and he talked to me, laid out his plans, and I told mine. So, we developed a relationship then that's right up to date. I traveled with him in 1948; there were meetings with him. There are a lot of things that we did. HESS: Okay, we'll get into that in just a minute, but at the time that you were appointed to that position, what were your main objectives? Was it... KEENAN: To repeal the law. HESS: ....the repeal of Taft-Hartley? KEENAN: That's right. My only job was to try and elect members to Congress that would support repeal. HESS: All right. Okay, that's one method that you were going to use, to get people in who would vote labor's way. What other methods did you use -- did you employ? KEENAN: Now, what do you mean? HESS: Working with people. Was there any way you thought that you might be able to swing votes by working with Congressmen who were already there? KEENAN: Yes, we did. We did. Well a number of them came to me; Hale Boggs, [Alvin E.] O'Konski from Wisconsin, [Homer E.] Capehart talked to me. He was a delegate and a candidate -- no, not then, that was next year -- but anyone that was up for reelection that year, a Congressman from Indiana, oh, any number of them that said that they didn't know what they were voting for, and they didn't want to lose labor's support. A couple of them were members of unions. So, we just started from scratch, had no program, we just -- we were not organized. But it was one of the most satisfying jobs I ever had because everybody was with you, everybody was in line with supporting the program you were sponsoring. HESS: Okay, what went wrong? KEENAN: What went wrong? HESS: Yes. KEENAN: Well, Taft and the southerners. We had done our job in the North, but we didn't make any changes in the South, and they are HESS: That's a bit more difficult to do, is it? KEENAN: Yes. Taft was very clever. If you remember, we tried to get the Taft-Hartley as the first order of business after the tax bills. And oh, there were a number of people like Helen Douglas and a few more that got tied up in these civil rights questions, and they allowed the civil rights question to get in ahead of Taft-Hartley. Now, labor supported civil rights all the way, and we in Washington asked them to set that aside until we had established something on a liberal basis, and we thought that we had the votes in the early days, after Congress convened. And what happened, we got into that bitter civil rights fight and Taft was able to keep his people solid, and then he picked up these southerners and he set up a coalition that beat us. We only lost the Sims amendment and we were divided, too, in the Sims amendment. We had [John L.] Lewis in those days and he was for outright repeal. Our friends advised us that it was -- that you couldn't get it repealed, but we could amend it pretty well. So, we set up the Sims amendment. And when the vote came for the Sims amendment, John Lewis put the heat on all of the Congressmen from the coal areas, and they didn't vote, even Gus Kelly, chairman of the labor committee, didn't vote that day. And we blew that by a few votes, and then we went to the Senate and we lost it there by two votes, three votes. HESS: Did the fact that AFL and CIO were separate entities back in those days and operating separately cause any difficulties? KEENAN: That was one time we were together. HESS: Oh, you were together on that. KEENAN: We were together on that. HESS: Would you have good coordination between the two, between your people and CIO? KEENAN: Well, there was fine coordination between Jack Kroll and me. I think that President Green and President [Philip] Murray had some - I don't think they were ever, you know ... so they didn't talk to one another. I think they -- but I think they had an understanding in this one, I'm not sure. But I'm quite sure that there was one time we were -- there was some division. I think that many of the CIO were for Wallace. I know clothing workers and a lot of others were. HESS: In your efforts to try to get the Taft-Hartley Act repealed, who on the President's staff did you work with? Now Dr. Steelman was the Assistant to the President, did you work with Dr. Steelman? KEENAN: No, we didn't. We worked with members of Congress. My relationship was very close to John McCormack, who was then the leader, Tom [Thomas J.] O'Brien and Gus Kelly, he was chairman. That was the group we worked with. And in the Senate we worked with [Scott W.] Lucas and the President. HESS: And the President? KEENAN: Yes. HESS: Were there times when help from the White House staff may have been welcomed and was not forthcoming? I mean they had a staff over there, why wasn't it used? KEENAN: Well, I'll tell you, I was new at that time. Let's see, I was only here about six months or seven months, and I wasn't familiar with the operation over there. I think we had lobbyists for the AF of L and lobbyists for the CIO that we used and then different international field people HESS: How would you evaluate the effect of President Truman's veto of Taft-Hartley on the labor vote in 1948? KEENAN: Well, I don't know, I wasn't here. I wasn't here. So I can't say anything about that. There, I think that Truman, on his own, came through, because I think most of his advisers at that time wanted him to sign the bill. You see, we got caught in a bad jam. I'll give you my experience. When we came into -- when I came into the government in 1940, we had the draft. They had already made the selection as far as the draft was concerned, and when we brought these boys in, when the first draft was called, we had no quarters, we had no facilities whatsoever. We had no camps. We had to start building camps. And on maneuvers in 1940 in September and October, they were using trucks and broomsticks, trucks for tanks and broomsticks for rifles. We had no ships, we had no airplanes, we had nothing; no powder plants. I mean, I remember we only had two powder plants, one at Indian Head, Maryland and one up at Picatiny Arsenal I think. So, we started a program of construction never known in the history of the world. That was my assignment, traveling to every point in this country. One day I was in Jacksonville, Florida at the airbase there, the next day at Corpus Christi at another airbase, the next day in Las Vegas to a magnesium plant, and back into Ohio and Indiana for powder plants. And we had had unemployment for almost eleven years. So, my job there was to recruit these people and bring them to these sites. I remember going into Gallup, New Mexico where the people were living in their cars, at one point. The same way in Las Vegas. And the workmen of this country never hesitated. We sat down and worked out an agreement, a "no strike" agreement, and it was lived up to a hundred percent. Every emergency that came up, on landing craft, on high octane gasoline, and most of all, the Manhattan Project, where we -- I had fifteen men going around this country to meet the requirements of the Manhattan Project both in Tennessee and the place they closed yesterday, Hanford, and the contributing plants in order to bring about the bomb. Nobody hesitated. Somebody should have seen the conditions at Hanford that our people worked under. Then, if you remember, there was a period at Anzio when we were holed in for a hundred and three days. They didn't have artillery heavy enough. We then went around the country and set up a couple of plants so we could build a 2 -- manufacture the 240. And nobody asked for -- they just took things as they found them. And if it wasn't for the working people of this country, the sacrifices they made, we may have been fighting for another four or five years, because we delivered the tanks, we delivered the guns, we delivered the battleships, destroyers and everything else. So when we broke through at the St. Lo breakthrough, and we got to the Rhine, everybody here just knew that the German end of it was over. So, these big concerns in this country had the prime contracts and they then took their plants and reconverted them. They didn't bring the small employer, or the small manufacturer in on prime contracts, they were subcontracts from the large contracts, and, consequently, when they started cutting back, the first people who were affected were the small plants. And we were getting unemployment. During that period we coined a phrase of "take home pay." Well, take home pay meant take home pay for working sixty or seventy or eighty hours. And Americans are born this way: no matter what they make, they spend. So, they started to adjust their living standards to spend the take home pay. So then when they called us in, in March or April of that year to talk about reconversion, that was the fight that Nelson and the military got into, because he wanted to make plans for reconversion and the big interests didn't want anything done until they had an even chance. So, consequently, there was nothing done as far as reconversion was concerned until almost the surrender of Hitler, and then there was a solid group of military that didn't want to do anything until Japan fell. And many of those people knew at that time that we had the atomic bomb. But, anyhow, there wasn't a thing done on reconversion until the surrender of Japan. So when that happened in August of 1945, they shut off ship construction, they shut off airplane construction, stopped all kinds of munitions construction. So, people were discharged, they were unemployed. And many of these plants went from an 80 hour week to a 40 hour week. And then you had rations and you had shortages of everything. You had the kids coming home in late 1945 and early 1946. Everybody was trimming them, for everything they bought. There was a shakedown there, a black market here. And the average person was so incensed over rationing and controls, they just took off on the administration. Took off after Truman and labor got the backlash because the coal strike was on. They blamed the unions. Well, the unions had had it. You couldn't hold your members. We got it and they were able to build that up. So, when we went to the election that fall, we lost everything, see. But if there ever was a group of people in this country that deserved the blue eagle or anything else, it was the working people. Anyhow, we got the backlash, as I say, and that brought on Taft-Hartley, and that brought us back to our feet. We came back then in the last three, four months, and it was the labor people generally that went out and did the job in 1948 to elect Truman. HESS: A couple of points: You mentioned Hanford, Washington. Do you recall the time during the war when Mr. Truman received some information about the vast quantity of money that was being spent in Hanford, Washington? Do you recall anything about that? KEENAN: Oh sure, I was one of the few people who had a "Q" clearance for the whole Manhattan Project under General [Leslie Richard] Groves. So, I knew all about it. I remember the meeting when they called us together. It was over in Secretary [Henry M.] Stimson's office, along with the top brass. I remember Secretary Stimson opened the meeting, turning the meeting over to Secretary [Robert P.] Patterson, with us there. Patterson said this is Buck Rogers stuff, and went on to say that the one that could control this formula would win the war. He said we were starting out from scratch, all we had was four or five pilot plants. We started out from scratch and that was in September or October of 1943, and went on through the war. HESS: Was this the first that you knew about the atomic bomb? KEENAN: I didn't even know what it was then. HESS: Atomic energy, I should say. KEENAN: They had just told us about the job and we didn't inquire any further. He just turned to me and he said, "Joe, you've got to go and find 100,000 building construction workers." That late in the day, that was 1943. HESS: At that late date. That was a little difficult during the war, wasn't it? KEENAN: Yes. HESS: How did you do it? KEENAN: Well, I told you about these 18 men that went all over the country, going to the building trades councils and making a plea for these fellows to go out there. Either to Hanford or to... HESS: Tennessee. KEENAN: Tennessee. HESS: Do you recall the time that Secretary Stimson talked to Mr. Truman and asked him to not press the investigation any further, said that there was just something big going on, and, "I can't tell you what it is and please don't investigate any further." Do you recall that? KEENAN: I don't know, I wasn't in on that. HESS: All right. What else could have been done in the 81st Congress to get Taft-Hartley repealed, other than the methods that you have mentioned? KEENAN: Well, I think that Taft was a power. Taft wasn't going to have the law repealed. We had enough votes, a number of times, but when Taft, in particular, in the Senate, put on a drive, he was able to swing many of these people back to him. There were only one or two votes in the Senate ... I think it was one or two votes that we lost it by. But in the House we had plenty of votes if Lewis and a few more had let their people vote. HESS: I've asked about Dr. Steelman, but were there others in the White House that you occasionally worked with, for instance Clark Clifford, who was the Special Counsel; or Charles Murphy. KEENAN: Charlie Murphy I had some dealings with, but most of my dealings, if there were any, were direct with the President. HESS: All right, in 1949 two men were brought in and given the title Legislative Assistant to the President to try to smooth things out between the White House and the Hill. They were Joseph Feeney and Charles Maylon. Did you have any dealings with them? KEENAN: None at all. HESS: Okay, now there were several times during his administration when Mr. Truman exercised the provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act himself. Did this have any effect on labor's vote between 1948 and 1952? KEENAN: No. HESS: Why? KEENAN: Well, I think that in 1952 labor was a thousand percent -- not a thousand, but behind Stevenson. I think one of the problems that Stevenson had was that his own party didn't support him. I know in Illinois I was pretty sure they would have had a hundred percent but he didn't get it. I think Stevenson was concerned as Governor because he saw what happened to Governor [Henry] Horner. He had to run a tight ship, if that's what you say, and there wasn't any -- you know, there wasn't the drive that you got in previous years, and that was in a number of areas. And I think that Eisenhower just took the imagination of the American people. I don't think anybody could beat Eisenhower in 1952. HESS: Did you ever speak personally with President Truman on other labor matters, other than Taft-Hartley? KEENAN: Oh, I used to go in to see him quite often, but I can't remember, you know. I generally left the labor dealings to President Green and the -- his staff, the staff that he used on the Hill. And any time I talked to Truman about labor it was on some single issue that I thought that he was interested in or some of my friends were interested in. And I went to him to talk about it. HESS: At the times that you would go in did you ever meet Matthew Connelly? Do you know Mr. Connelly? KEENAN: Every time I went in. HESS: Did you know Matt Connelly very well? KEENAN: Very, very, very well. Very well, a great guy. Great guy. It was unfortunate what happened to him, but I always had a high regard for him. HESS: Do you think it would have been helpful if organized labor and the Government would have set up a system of labor advisers in the Government departments during these days? KEENAN: You have it. You have it. I was a part of it. HESS: Well, there were men who were Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, and things like that, but what about the other departments? KEENAN: Oh, I always believed in this. Take in my own case, I think that's typical. Roosevelt put us in, we went out and did our jobs and we paid no attention to anybody. There were no records; we went out and did the job. And we delivered; not all of us, but most of us went in and did the job and delivered. And organized labor can make a contribution today. But there are people in this country that have influence with the President. I don't care what President it is, he is warned not to bring labor people into it. They put you out on a side and call you in and put your name on a list, but they don't come in. And they have to be a long time wearing in before they'll be as confident, or close enough to gain the confidence of these fellows so they make the same contributions. No labor fellow can come in with -- he might have been able to do it with Stevenson. I'm sure you couldn't with Kennedy, you couldn't do it with Johnson, you couldn't do it with this fellow -- bring in a labor guy and give him the same standing as they did Humphries and Wilson and the rest when they took over. And they're always going to have a void until these administrations pick out a guy that they can depend upon, that is trustworthy, and can go to people like Meany and the rest, and lay out their programs, and have a sounding and then try to discuss it. But today, since 19 -- well 1952, the labor movement has no representation in Government. In 1960 , that's where I got into a bind with Kennedy when I went in. I told it to Kennedy and I tell it to them all. Labor should have a secretary of a department. Not Labor, labor isn't -- he should be a secretary of one of the other branches of the Government, and there should be an assistant secretary in Defense, in State, and Interior, in Commerce and probably one or two others, certainly in Health and Welfare. But today there is no person in labor with any standing in government. Now we've got a shortcoming, too. If the President should select him, we should make him available no matter how important he is, just like business. Until we do that, we're just going to be second-class. But I am as sure as I'm sitting here, that labor can make the greatest contribution to the President personally, if they get the right guys, bring them in, and give them the standing that's necessary. HESS: What is your opinion of the handling of the Department of Labor and the Secretaries of the Department of Labor during Truman's administration? The first was Madam [Frances] Perkins, who of course, was the holdover from the Roosevelt administration. KEENAN: Oh, she was outstanding. But we had no real Secretary of Labor during Truman's administration. You could put [Maurice J.] Tobin in, but Tobin narrows down, and the Secretary of Labor, everybody knows, was John Steelman. And I think at that time, too, this little girl in New York had a lot to do with it, what's her name, Anna Rosenberg. And I think Mrs. Perkins did a hell of a job. HESS: Well, she was replaced by Louis Schwellenbach from 1945 to 1948, roughly the time that you were in Germany. Do you know anything about Louis Schwellenbach particularly? KEENAN: Wonderful man. HESS: Do you have any opinions as to his capabilities? KEENAN: He was a wonderful man, but I didn't know him very well. HESS: And then Tobin took over in 1948 and stayed there through 1953. Do you think that having Steelman and having a labor function in the White House, as Mr. Truman did, created a conflict of interest between the White House and the Department of Labor? KEENAN: Well, I don't think so. I think that if you had anybody there but Tobin .... Tobin was a fine decent guy. Tobin was a go-along guy, and he accepted it, but if it was somebody else they would never have stood for it. If he was Secretary of Labor he'd want to carry all the responsibilities of the office. But anything that affected us (I'm talking now of strikes and everything else), they had to go to Steelman. HESS: Was he effective to work with, Dr. Steelman? KEENAN: Well, he was effective, yes, in his own way, yes. But I don't think he could have been effective if you had a good outstanding labor guy in there that knew how to get through, and hit the leaders head-on. I have the highest regard for Steelman, but I don't feel personally that people on the fringe can do the job as well as people on the inside. Just the same as with Truman. All you had to do to get to talk to Truman was to get to know the people on the inside. Very influential, the guys he played poker with, the guys he associated with. They had their chance. We used to have in our organization a poker game at the Council, and I've heard the leaders say there was more business done in the poker games than there ever was done on the floors, the floors of the convention or of meetings. And that holds true for Truman and for .... HESS: And a good many other areas. KEENAN: McCormick and for all the rest. It's that good fellowship at a poker game. HESS: Did you ever play poker with Mr. Truman? KEENAN: No. No, I wasn't that close. HESS: All right, what do you recall about the attempt on the parts of some elements in 1948 to have someone other than Mr. Truman as the party standard bearer? KEENAN: Well, I knew all of them. I stood up all the way for Truman. HESS: Against whom? KEENAN: Oh, well there was, I was try... HESS: Who were some of those that were.... KEENAN: There was Eisenhower. The one guy that was talked about most of all was Eisenhower; there was nobody else. Well, I don't -- I think they had all given up the ghost. I'll never forget that last night when they had Truman sitting around until 3 or 4 in the morning to make his acceptance speech. I never saw anything so -- oh, it was just disgraceful the treatment he got. And in 1948 HESS: You were there that night in Philadelphia? KEENAN: I was there that night. I was there that night. And everybody was anxious to go home. They had given up the ghost. They had given up the ghost, and only his determination remained. I happened to be close to him when he threw his speech away in Omaha; Lincoln, either one. That was on his first swing around and that's when the tide turned. The guy that was national chairman or the national committeeman in that state of Nebraska was for Eisenhower, he was for anybody other than Truman. And, well, Truman moved from there, went out, took that swing up northwest, caught fire on the way out and really got on fire going down the coast, and coming back east. HESS: Now you mentioned you did not travel with the President, but what do you recall about the campaign of 1948? KEENAN: Well, I traveled with him some. And I traveled with .... HESS: When did you travel? KEENAN: Well, I traveled with him on this last swing around through these states here. And oh, this was in the last week, and then I was pretty close to where he was at, either there that night or I was -- you see that was my first year and I didn't have time. I was going to these meetings set up for labor, and I would try and arrange the meetings so I would be somewhere in the locality that he'd speak on those nights, and then I'd drift over to these areas to meet with our people, and, you know, carry on a conversation of what a great guy he was. HESS: Did you ever help organize any of the meetings in which the predominate part of the audience were labor people who had been lined up by their superiors to be there? Did you work on things like that? KEENAN: We all worked together. And all of these -- we didn't know where we were. We didn't know how popular he was. So it took an organization of everybody to fill the auditoriums that he was to speak in. HESS: You mentioned his last swing. I think the last swing of the campaign was up through the northeast, and ending in New York. Ending, I think he spoke in ... KEENAN: On a Saturday night... HESS: In Madison Square Garden. Were you there? KEENAN: ...no, it was a Friday night. No, I was someplace else. I was with him from here to Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh back here, and I didn't go out that following morning. I went on through -- I went out, oh, someplace, I don't know where I went. HESS: At the times when you were present when he spoke, what kind of reception did he seem to get? KEENAN: Oh, it was entirely -- I thought in Chicago, particularly. I thought the greatest political crowd I'd ever seen in my lifetime was when President Roosevelt appeared at the Chicago Stadium in the last swing of the 1936 election. But the crowds that I saw in 1948 in Cleveland, the crowds that I saw in Pittsburgh, the crowds that I saw, surpassed that. In his last two weeks he was really winging. The Chicago crowd was a greater crowd than the 1936 crowd. HESS: Did you think Mr. Truman was going to beat Mr. [Thomas E.] Dewey? KEENAN: I did. I did, three months before when I saw the thing change. I was one of the few that went about the country on that. HESS: All right, anything else on 1948? KEENAN: No. HESS: All right, we have discussed the major events dealing with labor and one of those events that occurred in Mr. Truman's second term, was the attempt to repeal Taft-Hartley. What else in a labor vein comes to mind between1948 and 1952 besides the repeal of Taft-Hartley? What else did you try to do? KEENAN: Well, there were a number of things, they are all a matter of -- you see, I was purely on the political side of it. When it got to the legislation, then it was the legislative groups of the AFL and CIO that picked up from there. I think one of their great accomplishments of 1949 was the Taft-Ellender-Wagner Housing Bill. HESS: Did you work on that? KEENAN: No, I didn't. I was -- my full time was devoted to politics. I was already in the 1950 campaign. HESS: What did you do? KEENAN: Well, I was chairman, and we tried to build on the organization that we set up in 1948. HESS: Trying to get people elected who you thought might vote favorably. KEENAN: Trying to get a permanent -- we were in the process of developing a permanent political organization in the AF of L. We got through 1948 and that gave us a boom that helped us, and then we went into the 1950 campaign, and as you know, it was a bad year for the Democrats; 1950. HESS: I don't believe they lost the House and the Senate that year though, did they, as they did in 1946? KEENAN: No, they didn't. They didn't lose the House and the Senate .... HESS: It was a reduction in numbers. KEENAN: ....but it was just one or two. HESS: Yes. KEENAN: Just one or two. And then we lost -- oh, we lost some great fellows. We lost Lucas, we lost -- well, we lost the race in New York and California, Helen Gahagan Douglas, lost the Senator in Ohio. Well, we couldn't beat Taft, and oh, I just don't remember now, I used to have it on the tip of my finger. HESS: When did you first become aware that Mr. Truman did not intend to run for reelection in 1952? KEENAN: When it was announced. HESS: Were you there at the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, that was held out here in the National Guard Armory? KEENAN: Yes, I was there. HESS: Did it come as a surprise? KEENAN: No. You know they were giving him a hell of a pasting in those days. And, oh, I don't know, it was just an unfortunate time in the Democratic Party, you know. They had been able to, as you know, they were able to capitalize on the McCarthy business, and the deepfreezes, and all that kind of stuff, and the press was really rough. So were radio and television. Now I suppose that had the same effect on Truman it had on Johnson. I think Johnson could have won. HESS: In this last election if he hadn't taken himself out of the race, right? After Mr. Truman took himself out of the race, that was on March the 29th, 1952, who did you see as the best standard-bearer for the Democrats at that time? KEENAN: At that time? HESS: At that time. KEENAN: A fellow we supported, Stevenson. HESS: Stevenson. Well, of course, being from Chicago and being from Illinois, you would be more familiar perhaps with Governor Stevenson than other people in the United States may have been at that time. What did you know about Governor Stevenson at that time? KEENAN: I found that he was a fellow you could depend upon; he had courage. He had done a great job of governing the state. And he was a fellow that in my own thinking was better equipped than most of the fellows that were named. And I had a chance just to meet with them and form some observations. HESS: What was your opinion of some of the other people who were being spoken of at that time? Vice President Barkley for one? KEENAN: I was for Barkley a hundred percent but Barkley was way up there in years; I think he was seventy-six or seventy-five years old. Between the two, I felt that Barkley was a great Senator, but I thought personally that Stevenson had the qualifications of becoming a good President. HESS: As I understand the story, when Vice President Barkley went to the convention that year, he went with the idea of receiving labor's support and was informed at the convention that it just could not be given to him because of his age. Is that correct, and were there other reasons? KEENAN: That's the only reason. HESS: All right, Estes Kefauver also would liked to have had the nomination that year. Did you know anything in particular about him? KEENAN: I knew Kefauver very well. I didn't like the way that the people that were promoting Kefauver went about it. I think that they walked him into this investigating committee to hurt a lot of people, hurt the Democratic Party, and when I heard of the people that furnished the money to put it on, I just couldn't go for it. HESS: And of course, at the convention Adlai Stevenson was chosen as the party's nominee. What role did you play during the campaign? KEENAN: Well, the same thing I had in 1948. HESS: Did you travel with Governor Stevenson? KEENAN: No, I worked very close to his organization in Springfield. HESS: Who did you work with in Springfield? KEENAN: Well, a fellow that is around now, Bill Blair. HESS: William McCormick Blair. KEENAN: Bill Blair, and the Senator from Oklahoma at that time. Defeated ... HESS: [Robert S.] Kerr? KEENAN: No, the other fellow, Monroney. HESS: Did you work any with Judge Carl McGowan at that time? KEENAN: I didn't know McGowan. There was a fellow from St. Louis -- from Philadelphia, that was national committeeman, I think, and I worked with Mitchell. HESS: Stephen Mitchell. KEENAN: Steve Mitchell, close. HESS: Did you think that Stephen Mitchell did a good job as national chairman that year? KEENAN: I think he did as good a job as anybody else. I always had a high regard for Bill (William] Boyle. I had a high regard for -- well, I had the highest regard of all for Butler. HESS: Paul Butler. KEENAN: Paul Butler. He didn't very well fit with a lot of the old pros, but to me he was the closest thing to [James A.] Farley we've had. I think this. We've had a lot of national committeemen, and you've got to recognize that one time Johnson and Rayburn were both leaders. You wrote a party platform and spent all that time, and they just ignored it, didn't pay any attention to it. Butler and Mitchell are the only two tried to force the Congress to accept the platform, to try to enact some of the planks in it. And as you know, Butler was always in trouble with the big cities; so was Mitchell. HESS: Mitchell had been appointed by Governor Stevenson to replace Frank McKinney, who had been put into the position by President Truman, and President Truman thought that it would have been best to have left his man in there. What is your view on that? KEENAN: Well, I think that I would agree with Truman on that. I think that's one of the mistakes Stevenson made. I think he caused a lot of people to cool off on him, so to speak, because of that move. HESS: What's your evaluation of the general relationship between President Truman and Governor Stevenson? KEENAN: I think it was just cool; it wasn't a very warm relationship. I shouldn't make a statement on it, but from what I read .... I'm sure that President Truman knew my relationship with Stevenson, and I was no person to .... he didn't discuss the matter with me. HESS: How would you evaluate the commitment to the goals of labor of the Presidents of recent years? Starting with Roosevelt. KEENAN: Well, I never saw the commitments. I don't think there were any commitments. HESS: Well, no, that's probably poorly worded, but what I was driving at was, how much support could labor have reasonably expected from the various Presidents? KEENAN: Well, I think on any issue that we discussed with the Presidents (I'm talking now about American labor), and they agreed with our aims, I think they gave everything they had. I don't think they had full control while they were in the Presidency. I think with Roosevelt it was his determination and the people around him, the Tommy Corcorans and the Ben ... HESS: Cohen. KEENAN: ...Cohen, went out and took his program, and of course, we were with it a thousand percent. And we had to overcome a lot of opposition. And the people in the South, these Senators, Robinson and, oh, there's any number of them, you hear them discussed. But only the determination of Roosevelt made many of these laws possible. There was no President had that much power or exercised that much power. HESS: How closely allied were Mr. Truman's goals with the goals of labor? We've touched on that subject many times this morning, but... KEENAN: I think that Truman depended on the labor movement to bring their program to him, and then he would support it. I think the labor movement is responsible for most of these social laws. Many of them are revolutionary when they are first proposed, and we had to go through that procedure. Year after year, you keep throwing it in, throwing it in, and finally getting it passed. Nobody would say in 1933 that we would have Social Security in this country, but in that particular case, I think, labor probably helped as did others outside of labor. That sold the President on Social Security. The farm laws and all the rest were revolutionary in 1933, but it was that series of legislation that was passed from 1933 to 1937 that set us on this New Deal approach and we've improved upon it ever since. But now, if you'll check your records you'll find that 1937 and 1938 were the two peak years. I think the President's influence started to wane when he tried to pack the courts and went into the election of 1938. And I don't think that in 1939 anyone in this country, except probably a few of his confidants, thought that he would run for a third term. Because, if you remember, the attempted repeal of the Wagner Act in which the Smith Committee was set up was in 1939 , and they started to tear it apart. And Social Security. In 1939 if they had carried out the original laws, as far as the contribution, Social Security would be in good shape today, but..... One of the real guys that gave us a lot was Vandenberg. Vandenberg was able to go to the Senate in 1939 and there was supposed to be an increase in the contributions, and it was held off; I think they held it off until 1946 or 1947. But if we had gone ahead and started to make these advances according to the original law, I think Social Security would be in good shape today. HESS: During the Truman administration, when labor would have a legislative proposal that they would like to put forward, how would that be done? Would you take that to the President, would you take that to one of his staff members or would you just forget them altogether and take it to the Congress? KEENAN: Oh no, I was never very close. That was all done inside the legislative branch of the AF of L. HESS: Okay. What about General Eisenhower? How close do you think his goals were aligned to the goals of labor? KEENAN: I don't think that at the time he became President he understood labor. I think later on, I think fellows like Jim Mitchell, and let's see, Martin Durkin went in and he was to -- well, he tried to carry on the job I thought he should have done. But there again I think Martin went in at a bad time. He had fellows like [Sinclair] Weeks and several others that just fought us all the way. There again, he was a loner. He had no chance against those other people that were in Eisenhower's company all the time. I think Eisenhower had a good heart, and I was very, very close to Jim Mitchell and I know that Jim Mitchell could do great things with Eisenhower. HESS: How would you rate Eisenhower's Secretaries of Labor, Mitchell and Durkin? KEENAN: Durkin was only there a short time. HESS: How would you rate them as compared to the ones that Truman had? Were they better than the ones that Truman had, Schwellenbach and Tobin? KEENAN: Mitchell, to me, was as good as any we've ever had, a very fine man. HESS: Was this unusual in a Republican administration, which is usually thought of as a conservative party? KEENAN: I think it was because he was from the other side of the tracks. HESS: How in the world did he ever get in there? KEENAN: I'll tell you how he got there. I worked with Mitchell very closely during the war, during the WPA days. General Somervell was director in New York. HESS: Brehon B. KEENAN: That's right. When they passed the WPA they had no administrative help, and they appealed to the big corporations of this country to make people available. Jim Mitchell was in the employment area I think of Western Electric. His home was in Brunswick, New Jersey and he worked at Kearny. And he came in and started to work and he finally got right under Somervell. So, Somervell became head procurement man during the war. And he remembered Mitchell and brought Mitchell in as his manpower man. The job that Mitchell had done in the military, in the Army was outstanding. There were a number of people worked with him. I think there was a fellow, a little general who was at Macys, I forget his name, I can't think of it. And Jim was working under him in the Army. When the job wound up with the Army he went to Macy's, and then to Bloomingdale's, and he made such a record in those areas that I think that it was people in New York that knew him, suggested him to the President and he accepted. And Eisenhower knew him during the war, too, because he was in charge of procurement. He was in charge of labor relations and that was long before Eisenhower became General, the top guy. Jim started in 1941-1942. Well, Jim had four and a half years. He was in charge, he was the top labor man. The most important job at the start was construction, so he got to know all of the construction people across the country. He also was in charge of ordnance, so he got to know everybody in the unions that prevailed in ordnance, in the Quartermaster Corps, and all across the board. So, he had a better understanding. Because of this relationship he understood more about labor than most of the fellows that were appointed. Now I'm sure that Schwellenbach was a great guy. Schwellenbach was a judge, he was a Federal judge, never had much of a contact with labor. Marty Durkin was -- but Marty Durkin didn't stay long. Now, Tobin was a Governor. He knew the operations and knew what happened to come to him as a Governor. But Mitchell had four years of directing every kind of a situation. Every kind of a situation, no matter if it was a coal strike or what it was, Jim was in. If it was a transportation strike, Jim was in it, or he had a top fellow under him, that headed the .... whatever was necessary. So, Jim had the experience and he was as fair as could be, and everybody trusted him. That's not saying that we didn't trust the rest of them, but you could go to Jim with your problem and he half understood it. HESS: And some of them don't. KEENAN: That's right. The others are, you know, they'd try, but.... HESS: It is a little foreign to them. KEENAN: And Jim knew the personalities to go to; he had the entree. Anybody on either side would trust him. HESS: How closely allied were John Kennedy's goals to those of labor? KEENAN: Well, I don't know. I think that Kennedy, in time, in that period of time, he was getting closer and closer, but I don't think that Kennedy had a touch, had a touch. I think that Truman came from the other side of the tracks. I think that Roosevelt, because of his condition, and what he saw in New York, had an approach to this that Kennedy never had a chance to get related with until he started as a candidate. I don't think that Kennedy (and I supported Kennedy a thousand percent), ever realized that there was a condition in the United States such as Appalachia, until he went in there. HESS: Until he saw that. KEENAN: I think that started it. I think that started the change in Kennedy, and I think it started to change the whole Kennedy family. HESS: Were you with him on that trip, sir? KEENAN: No, I wasn't on that. I traveled with him for three months during the campaign. HESS: Okay, what about Lyndon Johnson and his goals and labor's goals? KEENAN: Well, I think that Lyndon Johnson's were much like Kennedy's. I think that Lyndon came from the other side of the track, but I always had the feeling that down here in his heart, Johnson was right. It dates back to 1937, his first term as Congressman. There were only two southerners voted for wages and hours. One was Lyndon Johnson, the other was Lister Hill. And I always felt that in that unfortunate fight for the Senate, where he won by 85 or 90 votes, that he made commitments, and he kept the commitments, and I can't hate him for that. And I always said that if he was President, it would come out and I think he proved it. HESS: What about Richard Nixon? KEENAN: Well, I couldn't talk about him. HESS: All right. Well, one question KEENAN: He's in here and he's President now. HESS: All right. Somewhat closely related to that is the fact that in many of Mr. Truman's speeches in 1948 and 1952, as you will recall, he invoked the Hoovervilles and the bread lines, and back in those days labor was pretty solidly Democratic. Now, in the last election, the recent election, we heard a good deal about elements of labor swinging over to the Republican Party. Where do you believe labor's best interests lie? KEENAN: The Democratic Party. HESS: Why? KEENAN: Because I think the makeup is broader, the base is broader. I think it's made up of all elements in that there is more grassroot participation than there is in the Republican Party. HESS: What, in your opinion, were Mr. Truman's major accomplishments during his administration? KEENAN: Well, I think the greatest single decision ... there's two decisions which probably will stand out -- first, the use of the atomic bomb; the second, going into Korea. HESS: All right, do you think that he should have used the bomb, and do you think that he should have gone into Korea? KEENAN: I think he should have gone into Korea. If we had hesitated two weeks we would have lost everything. Yes, we had to either put up or shut up. HESS: In Korea? KEENAN: In Korea. HESS: What about the bomb? KEENAN: Well, the bomb; you can't talk about the bomb unless you think of the terrible devastation. It took a lot of guts and saved us millions of soldiers, but I'm no one to make a decision on that. HESS: What is your estimation of Mr. Truman's place in history? KEENAN: He will be one of the greatest. HESS: All right. KEENAN: I think he will stand with any, maybe surpass them all. HESS: Are there any areas that we have left out? Do you have anything else that you would like to add on Mr. Truman or your duties in those days, things that you may remember that I just did not ask a question about? KEENAN: No, I don't think so. HESS: We thank you very much for your participation. KEENAN: Okay. [Top of the Page | Notices and Restrictions | Interview Transcript | List of Subjects Discussed]
AFL and CIO, coordination between, 24-25 Barkley, Alben, 14, 48 Cardinal Falharper, 5 Eisenhower,, Dwight D., 54 Falk, Edward, 9 Germany, postwar, labor movement in, 3-7 Hannegan, Robert, 13 Johnson, Lyndon B., and labor goals, 59 Kaiser, Henry J, 12
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