Did Business Titans Find President Kennedy Guilty of Treason in the War on Organized Labor?
Article by PottersvilleUSA
There were many motives for the assassination in Dallas:
- JFK’s firm plan to withdraw from Vietnam by the end of 1965, – JFK’s peace overtures to Cuba and Russia–both Communist countries, – JFK’s stated plan to tax the oil industry and further tax the undertaxed wealthy, and – JFK’s refusal to put the wishes of big business above the needs of the people.
Yet I rarely see discussion of what I believe is a major factor in the decision by the Military Industrial Complex to murder him:
-President Kennedy supported labor unions.
The War on Organized Labor
Communism is the code word for labor union. Organized labor is the lone counterbalance to the immense power that corporations wield. Obviously corporations don’t want that counterbalance.They want slaves. The old South in the US. The forced labor in circa WW2 Germany. The new South in the US. They were/are utopia for industrialists.
The war on ‘communism’ is a war on organized labor. The rich and powerful have intentionally made the word ‘communism’ a dirty word, when in fact it’s merely an economic political framework as is capitalism. And like capitalism it can be corrupted but is not inherently bad.
For example, Hitler’s rise to power depended on his support by industrialists. They supported him because he promised to crush organized labor. Sure enough once in power he did just that. One of his first acts was to outlaw unions and lower wages. This resulted in huge profits for businessmen like Thyssen, Bush, Sullivan & Cromwell and Harriman. And it gave him a war machine that could be run cheaply and efficiently. Hitler understood business. Industrialists understood that about Hitler.
Another critical component of the perpetually profitable war machine is steel. This brings us back to Thyssen, P. Bush, Sullivan & Cromwell, Harriman Bros and the steel companies.
When President Kennedy took on US Steel it was a clash with the Titans. Donald Gibson describes this clash in his excellent book “Battling Wall Street.” And Laura Knight-Jadczyk discusses it in her excellent article “John F. Kennedy and the Titans.” These are two exceptional resources where Kennedy’s support of labor unions is illuminated.
To summarize this decades long battle: In 1911 the US government tried unsuccessfully to break the monopoly of US Steel, the first billion dollar corporation in history & a company symbolic of the high tide of banker power in America. It was largely run by Rockefeller through JP Morgan.
“After World War I, trade unionism surged forward. Membership doubled; organization expanded into meat packing, textiles, motors, and other open-shop fields. The key was steel. If unionism entrenched itself here, the entire mass-production sector could be swept into the labor fold. A steel drive, launched in August 1918, gathered force in the postwar months. By the summer of 1919 more than 100,000 steelworkers had joined up. In September the steel movement struck the industry and, despite the heroic scale of the conflict, expired. From that defeat there would be no reprieve until new forces were unleashed by the Great Depression.”From “Labor in Crisis: The Steel Strike of 1919.”
Then in April of 1952 Truman ordered the US Army to seize the nation’s steel mills to avert a strike.Good ol’ Truman. Now there’s a man who ‘understood business.’ However, he didn’t understand the law. His seizure was ruled illegal by Supreme Court two months later.
In 1956 650,000 US steel workers went on strike. In 1959 the Taft-Hartley Act was invoked by the US Supreme Court to break a steel strike. The epic battles–by and against labor unions–continued.
Then John Kennedy became president in 1960. He did not ‘understand business.’
As Laura Knight-Jadczyk says:
“Kennedy did not regard profit-making as the most esteemed of vocations. Brought up in a family of millionaires and a millionaire himself, he was not impressed by other millionaires, nor did he consider the successful businessman the most admirable of beings. He liked to quote from Dr. Johnson:
‘A merchant’s desire is not of glory but of gain; not of public wealth, but of private emolument; he is therefore rarely to be consulted on questions of war or peace, or any designs of wide extent and distant consequence.’
He was well aware of their power, but he did not trust the Titans. When he became President he declared: ‘Taken individually, labor leaders are often mediocre and egotistical, but labor as a whole generally adopts intelligent positions on important problems. On the other hand, businessmen are often individually enlightened but collectively hopeless in the field of national policy.’
Eisenhower sought out the Titans, respected their advice, and treated them as they thought they deserved to be treated — in other words, as representatives of the most influential body in the nation.”
In fact Eisenhower let business Titans and the military machine run amok during his 8-year presidency. Then at the end of his presidency, days before John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, the outgoing president went on television to warn the country.
“My fellow Americans:
Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. [Early drafts of his speech used the phrase "Military Industrial Congressional Complex."] The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
So Eisenhower allowed the Military Industrial Congressional Complex to become a juggernaut during his administration, and then handed it off to John Kennedy. A hand grenade with the pin pulled.
Back to Laura Knight-Jadczyk:
“Kennedy kept his distance. Prior to his election he had had little contact with industrial circles, and once he was in the White House he saw even less of them. Businessmen were generally excluded from the Kennedys’ private parties. Not only did he “snub” them (in the words of Ralph Cordiner, President of General Electric), he also attacked them. Kennedy did not consult the business world before making his appointments. The men he placed at the head of the federal regulatory agencies were entirely new.
Since the end of the war, the businessmen had become accustomed to considering these bodies as adjuncts of their own professional associations. They were more indignant than surprised. They attempted to intervene, but in vain. The President had a mind of his own.”
President Kennedy Had a Mind of His Own
In March of 1962 President Kennedy persuaded the United Steel Workers to accept a contract he hailed as “non-inflationary.” A few days later, the United States Steel Corporation announced an increase of 3.5% in its prices, and most other steel companies did likewise. US Steel, who had fought unionization for decades, punked the United Steel Workers and punked the US President. In the three days that followed, Kennedy put intense pressure on US Steel.
As Knight-Jadczyk explains:
“‘The following day at his press conference, the President declared: . . . the American people will find it hard, as I do, to accept a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans.’
This denunciation of the Titans stunned the nation. It marked the birth of a legend. The President’s remarks made headlines throughout the world and were even quoted in Pravda, which expressed its surprise and satisfaction. The businessmen were disconcerted by the violence of his reaction and by the apparent extent of his public support, but Roger Blough [US Steel CEO] maintained that his decision had been made “in the interest of the stockholders” and that the profits of the largest steel producers were 33% lower in the first quarter of 1962 than they had been in 1959.
The administration replied that the dividends paid to the stockholders of the steel corporations in 1958-61 were 17% higher than those paid in 1954-57. The steel industry rejoined that profits had exceeded billion in 1959, but that they had fallen to 7 million in 1961, endangering investment possibilities, the future of the steel corporations, and consequently the future of American industry. But, faced with FBI investigations, the pressure of public opinion, and the cancellation of government contracts, it yielded and revoked the increase.
On May 7, 1962, US News and World Report wrote: ‘What happened is frightening not only to steel people but to industry generally . ‘
May 28, 1962 was the blackest day on Wall Street since the 1929 crash. Steel holdings fell to 50% of their 1960 level. “This could become total war,” declared Avery C. Adams, Chairman of Jones and Laughlin Steel, to the stockholders of his company.
Business reaction was unanimous. Ralph Cordiner, President of General Electric, declared that Kennedy ought to reread his Lincoln, and David Lawrence wrote:
‘The heavy hand of government has just won a pyrrhic victory . . . Economic facts cannot be changed merely because politicians dislike them. Nor can America’s private enterprise system survive very long if the Federal Government itself engages in the mudslinging of class warfare and, in effect, tells an industry it must disregard profits, disregard dividends, and pay labor whatever the Administration says shall be paid even if, as in this case, it costs the industry an additional 0 million a year.