In May 1914, Rockefeller turned for help to Ivy Ledbetter Lee, the publicist for the Pennsylvania Railroad who would make a lasting reputation for himself as the creator of the Betty Crocker icon and the “breakfast of champions” slogan for Wheaties cereal. Lee’s advice to Rockefeller Junior was remarkable for its simplicity and soundness, even by 21st-century standards: “Tell the truth, because sooner or later the public will find out anyway. And if the public doesn't like what you are doing, change your policies and bring them into line with what people want.”
Yet, Lee’s campaign to polish the Rockefeller name immediately after the Ludlow Massacre got off to a rocky start when he relied on biased reports from local CF&I management to try to explain how the events in Colorado came to pass. For this he was labeled “Poison Ivy” by Upton Sinclair and “paid liar” by Carl Sandburg, who also characterized him as “below the level of hired gunman or slugger.”
But after an August 1914 trip west, Lee returned to New York with a more accurate assessment of the realities facing the Colorado miners and told his employer, “It is of the greatest importance that as early as possible some comprehensive plan be devised to provide machinery to redress grievances.” He also advised Rockefeller to put up placards in the mines informing the workers that their employers wanted to treat them fairly. According to Chernow, “Whatever his truth-shading tendencies, Lee probably helped to bring about more humane policies at CFI.”
“The Ludlow Massacre forced Junior to admit that his father held some antiquated views and that he must take spiritual leave of him,” wrote Chernow. “To do so, he needed a confidant from outside his immediate circle, someone who shared his sense of ethics and could devise a practicable, honorable way out of the impasse. He found this providential personage in William Lyon Mackenzie King.”
Grandson of William Lyon Mackenzie, who fought for Canadian independence, Mackenzie King had built a reputation as an arbitrator of rancorous labor disputes who believed in new government mechanisms for settling them. At the age of 25 he became his country’s first deputy minister of labour, and nine years later he was appointed minister of labour. In this capacity, he had been instrumental in the passage of the Canadian Industrial Disputes Investigation Act, also known as the Lemieux Act, which requires that either party in an industrial dispute give 30 days’ notice before changing wages or working conditions. The act further stipulated that at the end of the 30 days, application had to be made for an investigating and conciliation board composed of three members: one representing employees, another representing employers, and another chosen by joint nomination. Once the board had submitted a report to the minister of labour, the parties in the dispute could accept its recommendations, strike, or begin a lockout.
In June 1914, the Rockefeller Foundation invited King to New York City. In the course of a fourhour meeting, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., asked King to head the foundation’s new Department of Industrial Relations and, in that role, serve as his personal adviser on the Ludlow situation.
According to King, Rockefeller told him, “This situation in Colorado has brought home to me an aspect of the industrial trouble that I had never comprehended to the degree that I now comprehend. The situation out there where men and women have lost their lives has suggested to my mind that there should surely be some way of settling industrial differences other than by means of strife of this kind which causes loss of human life and loss of property and all this unrest. I want to use, if I can, some of my wealth to make that kind of thing impossible in the future; and that is my reason for asking your advice on this matter.”
Leaving the public sector, where he was renowned as a liberal politician, for such a high-visibility position in the private sector with a family of conservative repute was a difficult decision for King. But after two months, he accepted the post and helped prepare Rockefeller for his January 1915 appearance before the U.S. government’s Industrial Relations Commission, which in 1912 had begun investigating industrial violence.
“I believe it to be just as proper and advantageous for labor to associate itself into organized groups for the advancement of its legitimate interest as for capital to combine for the same object,” said Rockefeller in his opening statement before the commission. He added that such labor associations “provide benefit features, sometimes they seek to increase wages, but whatever their specific purpose, so long as it is to promote the well being of the employees, having always due regard for the just interest of the employer and the public . . . [I] favor them most heartily.” To biographers Collier and Horowitz, his comments “marked the unveiling of a new man.”
After the hearings, King advised the young Rockefeller that the time was ripe for him to take a leadership role in the fledgling area of industrial relations: “It seems to me you will have to lead…whether you will or no,” he wrote. “Your modesty and your humility does not permit you to see this, but those who have your interests and your life most at heart see it, and it is in the field of industry primarily that this leadership must be conspicuous.”
King proposed instituting a system of employee representation at CF&I that would provide the workers with a mechanism for airing grievances without fear of retribution. This was the basis of what would come to be known as the Rockefeller Plan. Its detractors, however, branded it “company unionism.”
In the spring of 1915, King spent two months visiting the coalfields of Colorado, interviewing local managers and miners and working out the details of his representation plan, which would also guarantee the right of a worker to join a union.
The death of Rockefeller’s mother on March 12, 1915, and the subsequent passing of his father-in-law in April kept him from accompanying King to Colorado that spring. But the following September, the two traveled to Colorado, where they talked and socialized with the miners and their families, sharing meals and even dances with them.
“For Junior, the Colorado trip was a trial by fire from which he emerged triumphant, converting the worst moment in the family history into something more promising,”wrote Chernow. “After the Colorado trip, Junior became a prophet for improved labor relations throughout American industry, an evangelical role he enjoyed more than browbeating unions.”
In numerous speeches, he championed King’s industrial philosophy and stressed the interdependence of labor and capital, as well as the need for personal contact between the two to avoid misunderstandings and conflicts. “The soundest industrial policy is that which has constantly in mind the welfare of the employees as well as the making of profits, and which, when human considerations demand it, subordinates profits to welfare. Industrial relations are essentially human relations,” he said. “It is therefore the duty of everyone entrusted with industrial leadership to do all in his power to improve the conditions under which men work and live.”
In October 1914, as they wound down their visit to Colorado, Rockefeller and King presented their CF&I Industrial Representation Plan before a group of miners in Pueblo.
Its principal features included:
- A secret ballot election of representatives from each of the mines
- Quarterly (or more frequent) district conferences
- Joint labor-management committees on cooperation and conciliation, safety and accidents, sanitation and housing, and recreation and education
- An annual meeting attended by the company president and other officers
- No discrimination against members of unions or other organizations
- No obligation to buy at company stores
- The right to employ checkweighmen
- The right of appeal to the company president
- The investigation of grievances by the president’s industrial representative
- Arbitration in some cases
- No discrimination against employee representatives
A week later, 2,846 miners voted on it by secret ballot; about 2,000 miners did not vote. The result was 2,404 votes in favor, 442 opposed.
Copyright © 2001, 2006 by Industrial Relations Counselors, Inc. All rights reserved.