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Oral Histories

The oral history interviews presented here are selected from a series of interviews with former ILGers, conducted by Fordham University historian Daniel Soyer in 2008 and 2009.

Ralph Reuter - ILGWU Heritage Project

  • Interviewer: Daniel Soyer
  • Date: March 4, 2009
  • Recordings: 2 parts; 2:10:42, 6:26

Biographical Information

Ralph Reuter was born in London, England, June 14, 1922. His army service during World War II ended when he was severely wounded at Dunkirk. He attended Cambridge University and the London School of Economics, earning a PhD in economics. Active in the Fabian Society and the Labor Party, he advised Arthur Deakin, head of the Transport and General Workers Union and the Trade Union Congress. He also worked for the Board (later Ministry) of Education. After the war, he joined the United Nations, first with UNESCO and then as a member of the staff of Trygve Lie in New York. He joined the ILGWU in 1950 as assistant to the general manager of the Dress Joint Board, Julius Hochman. In 1953 or 1954, he became educational director of the International, and in mid 1970s, administrator of the Northeast District Health and Welfare Fund. He was also active at various times in the Liberal Party, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Metropolitan New York Consumers' Council. He retired in the early 1990s.

Abstract

Reuter discusses his education as a socialist in Britain and his early work with the labor movement and in education there. He joined the staff of the UN under Trygve Lie, a Scandinavian socialist who recruited many other socialists to work for the new organization. There they kept an eye on communists who sought to infiltrate and US government agents who sought to intervene against the communists. Reuter criticizes the American labor movement, including the ILGWU and its successors, for lacking the ideological background necessary to maintain a dynamic movement and stave off the decline of recent decades. He is especially critical of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers of America and its leadership, and of the mergers that created UNITE and UNITE-HERE. He talks about his work with Julius Hochman at the Dress Joint Board, and of the educational goals of the union in training rank-and-file leaders. Reuter argues that the union and its leadership went downhill when it failed to recognize and cultivate new leaders among the new demographic elements coming into the industry in the 1950s and 1960s. He discusses the FOUR episode and David Dubinsky, as well as activities outside the union, including the Liberal Party (especially its role in Jacob Javits's early campaigns), and the Metropolitan New York Consumers' Council.

Project Description

The ILGWU Heritage Project documents the history of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union by collecting oral histories from retired union officers and staff. It is funded by a grant from the 21st Century ILGWU Heritage Fund (Jay Mazur, president; Muzaffar Chishti, director) to Fordham University.

Part 1, 2:10:42

Part 2, 6:26

Transcript

[0:00:00]

Soyer:

OK, this is Daniel Soyer, interviewing Ralph Reuter on Wednesday, March 4. Daniel Soyer interviewing Ralph Reuter on March 4, 2009. So I understand that -- what I'd like to do is talk a little bit about your background, and then also get into your activities with the union. And you were talking a little bit about some political activity, so I want to talk about that as well.

Reuter:

OK.

Soyer:

I understand you were born in Britain?

Reuter:

That's correct.

Soyer:

Where was that?

Reuter:

London.

Soyer:

Tell me something about your family, the neighborhood that you left --

Reuter:

My family was -- I never really knew my parents. By the time I knew what was going on, they had passed on. My father was a newspaper man. Worked for one of the London papers. But from an early time on, I was -- Well, it was a very peculiar time, because -- I graduated from Cambridge when the war was about to start. The war English-style, because -- And my graduating class from Cambridge was put on a short officers' training set-up at Sandhurst. Which was -- Sandhurst being the -- other than that involvement, being the West Point of England. And then we were immediately deemed to be done our -- we became officers, and we immediately went -- we weren't asked questions. We immediately went into the Army. So that's sort of the beginning of things --

Soyer:

Well, how did you get to Cambridge? You said you didn't know your parents, so where were you -- who raised you?

Reuter:

I got scholarships at an earlier point. And I got scholarships, which covered everything that were called the London County Council scholarships. Otherwise I couldn't have gone to university, there was no way.

Soyer:

Who raised you?

Reuter:

Grandparents, sort of. Sort of, because by the time I was ready to graduate from Cambridge I already was not on the best of terms with the grandparents and so on... You know, we made ends meet. I had a newspaper route when I was in secondary school. Both morning and afternoon. You made ends meet somehow.

Soyer:

Did you have siblings?

Reuter:

I had a brother, and that's it. But there was -- and at that point, that was sort of the beginnings of involvement with various left-wing organizations, like the Fabian Society. It was -- by the time I got out of the army, which I got out of because of being wounded, I pretty well

[05:00]

had relations with various people in the Labor Party. Plus the fact when I got out of the army, I got discharged -- my school had been moved from London to Cambridge. The people that I dealt with were the people that were left-wing, and so on. And as a matter of a fact I almost immediately got involved -- after I got out of the hospital -- with Arthur Deakin, who was the secretary-treasurer of the largest union, the Transport and General Workers Union, and when he became the chairman of the Trade Union Congress, I was working for Arthur. So there was an immediate connection. And then, from there on in, we were pretty well taken care of in terms of -- I got involved with education and things of that sort while going to school, because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to go to school.

Soyer:

So were you involved -- so you made connections with the labor movement before the war, as well, while you were in university?

Reuter:

No, you know the Cambridge set-up was left-wing, and by the time the war came around, and the London school was in Cambridge for all practical purposes, there were the obvious connections. One of my teachers was Harold Laski, you know. A very prominent guy at the time but probably wouldn't ring a bell with you -- Karl Mannheim, and I did some work for him, graduate work. He was one of the German refugees who got on the faculty of the London School, and things of that sort.

Soyer:

So you were studying -- you went to Cambridge undergraduate, and --

Reuter:

I was -- the only real consistent studying I did undergraduate work until they grabbed us for the Army. From there on in, by the time I came back, you sort of moved, because the... government was a joint setup, and the Labor Party got its share of positions in the government, and so on. So in the early days, while I was at school, I worked for what was then the Board of Education, which later on became the Education Ministry. But I consistently continued to go to school because I wouldn't have gotten anywhere if I hadn't been able to do that.

Soyer:

So you were a member of the Labor Party?

Reuter:

Yeah.

Soyer:

And the Fabian Society?

Reuter:

Yeah.

Soyer:

How did -- and I'm interested in how you found your way there. Was it when -- in your student days? Or did your family have a background in activism and politics?

Reuter:

Well, the family had -- it was a Labor family, the -- my father had been active. He was not a left winger, but he -- you know, he was a newspaperman whose views were akin of the Labor Party. And there were other members of the family who had the same relationship. So it was fairly easy. Once I got to where one of my teachers was Harold Laski and some of the others, there was no problem, because

[10:00]

automatically the relationships were the same. You know, the -- it was always that -- the same background, and so on.

Soyer:

And I'm curious: your name is not British, right? It's more German or --

Reuter:

The family -- well, the original family probably originated in Germany. But the original family was both Jewish and non-Jewish. The... family's background was, my father at one time worked for the Reuters news agency. You know?

Soyer:

But that's no relation?

Reuter:

Yes.

Q:

Yes, it is a relation?

Reuter:

That was a relation. Very much so. It is no more, because it's -- Reuters is today a trust. But no, the relationship was there. And there was all this weird relationship by virtue of the fact they had... you know, there was a direct relationship to the news agency, which was the prominent news agency as far as England was concerned. And by the time I got around to things, that -- the news agency as such ceased being what it had been, which was, in an earlier day, a French agency.

Soyer:

Wow. So you were raised Jewish or not? You were from the Jewish side of the family, or the not-Jewish side of the family? Or in-between? (laughter)

Reuter:

English Jews did not talk Yiddish. OK? So you can't draw a parallel on that kind of thing. We were Jew- yes. I was Bar Mitzvahed. Whatever that means. But part of the family was not Jewish. And the truth of the matter is that... the founder of the news agency was sort of Jewish. Yeah.

Soyer:

And how is he related to you?

Reuter:

He's German-Jewish.

Soyer:

No, but how was he related to you?

Reuter:

Oh, I think an uncle, or something further removed. Because I had no relationship in terms of the family. I did things on my own. And if it hadn't been for my doing things on my own, there is no story to be told.

Soyer:

Right. So you got to Cambridge, you studied with Laski, with Mannheim --

Reuter:

Studied with Laski, and people don't know that when I studied with Laski, the whole London School had been moved to Peterhouse in Cambridge.

Soyer:

That was because of the war?

Reuter:

Because of the war. So that when I got discharged as a result of being wounded... the school was already in Cambridge.

Soyer:

So what degrees do you have?

Reuter:

I have a couple of degrees. I have Bachelor's, Master's, and a Ph. D.

Soyer:

OK. And the Ph. D. is in what subject?

Reuter:

Economics.

Soyer:

And how -- you said you got involved already -- you were working for the Board of Education?

Reuter:

Well, the --

Soyer:

The ministry --

Reuter:

During the war, the English school system was due to change. At the point at which I originally became involved in the Board of Education, which was essentially

[15:00]

an English institution, the mandatory school-leaving age was 14. And by the time I got involved, it was pretty well ordained that eventually we would -- fairly rapidly, we would change things for the whole British Isles to 16, and then 18. But you have to bear in mind that when I originally became involved, the mandatory leaving age was 14. But the institution was an English institution. Scotland had its own setup; Wales had its own setup...

Soyer:

So what was your job there?

Reuter:

By the time I got involved -- and remember, this is after being discharged -- I was... sort of third in command at the Board of Education -- which, remember, was not the Ministry of Education yet. And my whole history after that was involvement with education, as such.

Soyer:

But you must have been very young at the time.

Reuter:

Yeah. I graduated from Cambridge at a fairly young age. I was the youngest person to get into the Army.

Soyer:

And you --

Reuter:

And so was my whole class, for that matter, because we weren't asked questions. We graduated from Cambridge, and it was "suggested" that we be -- into this officers training course, which was relatively short.

Soyer:

But so -- and can you tell me something about your military service? Where were you... ?

Reuter:

I eventually got wounded at Dunkirk, and that was the end of my Army career. I was operated on a number of times because I was fairly well damaged.

Soyer:

That was very -- that was relatively early in the war.

Reuter:

That was before the United States was in the war. And because of the nature of my injuries, I was released. Otherwise, we were -- there were no special deals for what you got, but my legs were pretty badly mangled, and... the -- there was very little -- so I -- the choi- I had no choices. The choices were to go to work, and school, but they both went together, because otherwise I couldn't have gotten an education without a job.

Soyer:

The job paid for your education, or just kept you living, basically?

Reuter:

I guess both. I guess both. You know, I had something to give to my employment, and my employment had something to give to me in terms of my education. And so I was able to get my education thanks to being involved politically.

Soyer:

And so the Labor Party won the election in -- what? Forty-five? Forty-six? Was it '46?

Reuter:

It was --

Soyer:

Forty-six?

Reuter:

Yeah.

Soyer:

Right at the end of the war?

Reuter:

Right.

Soyer:

But you moved from --

Reuter:

I --

Soyer:

-- government work to the Trades Union Congress?

Reuter:

Well, I worked for Arthur Deakin for a while. But then I got involved -- because of the international socialist movement, I got a job in Paris at UNESCO. And... (laughter) I was third in command at UNESCO, at a fairly young age.

[20:00]

And when I got tired of UNESCO and... was in New York somehow or other -- and I ran into Trygve Lie, who wanted me to join his staff. And in those days, Trygve Lie came out of the Scandinavian labor movement. And so I ended up doing Trygve's work with... the goings-on in the United States in terms of Communists, and was on -- I handled -- because I wasn't... a native American, I could get away with things and deal with security matters that other people couldn't, such as throwing out FBI agents out of my office, and things of that sort.

Soyer:

So I guess I have two questions. One is, it sounds like he was the UN, and all the UN at -- was the UN basically staffed by socialists at the time? Was that a... ?

Reuter:

Well, we all knew each other, because we had -- we all knew each other because we had been to international socialist conferences. Were we all socialists? We were different kinds of socialists. First of all, I wasn't a socialist in any American sense of the word. But then people who belonged to the Fabian Society weren't, either.

Soyer:

But there was a kind of a network?

Reuter:

Yeah.

Soyer:

An international network?

Reuter:

Yeah. And that's how I eventually ended up, when I quit the UN, getting a job with the ILG. I had known Sasha Zimmerman from overseas, and you know, I... met Sasha one day in the street, and I was at sort of -- didn't know where I was going to go. And he immediately insisted that I come to work for the union, and got me a job with somebody that he didn't like, that was at war. And I almost immediately when I came into the union and became -- not "almost" -- I did become the assistant to the general manager of the Dress Joint Board, which was a very large organization having a couple of hundred thousand members, and doing some of the critical things that were required. I mean, the ILG was a very prominent union in those days. And from there, I eventually went -- after -- in short order to the International -- to -- into the Education Department.

Soyer:

So getting back first to the UN, you said you kicked FBI agents out of your office. So in other words, there was a problem -- because the UN --

Reuter:

Well, there was always problems --

Soyer:

-- also had communist staff members.

Reuter:

-- with the United States. We always got... people who thought they knew, and they were involved in our setup. And what gave me permission to do things was that I was an outsider. I once threw FBI agents out of my office (laughter) when they suggested that Harold Laski was a communist. I threw them out with the remark -- I think I remember exactly -- saying, "Well, if he's a communist, I think our interview is finished," etc., etc. And the truth of the matter is, that's probably one of the funniest shtick around, because two weeks later, I got a call from Washington, because the reason why they were interviewing me was I was supposed to head up some sort of study of -- the Voice of America. And... so two weeks later,

[25:00]

(laughter) I get a call from Washington, and the guy introduces himself as an FBI supervisor, and he starts laughing and so on. He says, "I'm pleased. I told my guys they were lucky they didn't get thrown out the window." (laughter) You know, we were relatively independent as to what we could do, and most of the people who we ran into that we got inquiries about were not the communists. We knew who the communists were in the UN setup. You know? And (laughter) the officialdom like the FBI didn't know.

Soyer:

So they were after anyone who kind of seemed left wing or... ?

Reuter:

No! They didn't know!

Soyer:

They just had no clue?

Reuter:

They had no -- what their clue was is -- I don't think they understood when I said to them that... an orthodox Marxist is not a communist. (laughter) They couldn't fathom that.

Soyer:

Most of the communists must have been sent from their governments, right? Or they were... ?

Reuter:

No. They -- there were applications to the UN, and the... most of the communists did not have really significant jobs. You know? How could they have? The officer corps had its background in the socialist movement. We knew who was who.

Soyer:

Right. (laughter) Did you try to -- I mean, was there a conscious attempt to police them internally, or to keep them out, or to... ?

Reuter:

No. There was no point to it. There was no point to it. And (laughter) what were they going to do? I mean, for instance, there were three or four that were in the communications section on the East River. What were they going to do -- misdeliver mail or what? You know? So... But the American hierarchy decided that they were going to take after the people -- but they didn't know who they were. They didn't know who they were dealing with. And I think that essentially hasn't changed. You know? I have a very low opinion of security setups. And I never had, by virtue of the background -- the socialist background, I never had the... anticommunist attitude which made them my enemies. You know? Just didn't exist. Yeah, we had our own views, and we were very much socialists. But that had nothing to do with what I'm talking about. I mean, we never got involved with... in the McCarthy days, all we did was bat and do our jobs to make sure that we retained our workforce. Because what were they going to do?

Soyer:

I mean, here -- but around here, some of the biggest anti-communists were the socialists, right? Or the old socialists were sometimes leading the charge --

Reuter:

Well --

Soyer:

-- to oust the communists (inaudible).

Reuter:

-- yes and no. Yes and no. That stems from people not knowing the background. For instance, who was Sasha Zimmerman? Sasha Zimmerman was an important person in the late Twenties in terms of the communists. He was a Lovestoneite. Yeah. And

[30:00]

he never pursued the communist bit the way the rest of the world was pursuing it. They weren't those kind of enemies.

Soyer:

But someone like Dubinsky, for example, who was an old socialist? They were, right?

Reuter:

Yes and no. Dubinsky's socialism... I mean, Dubinsky got to be where he was by an accident of a lack of leadership in the union. If you look back on the history of the union, you're not going to find that Dubinsky in the earlier days played a prominent role other than being manager of Local 10, which was the cutters' local, the most important Local in New York, admittedly. But the political background wasn't there. To get to the political background, you have to go back further than Dubinsky.

Soyer:

Of the union, you mean?

Reuter:

Yeah. And the... Dubinsky had nothing to do with the early socialist part of the union, in that who was running things? The Forverts crowd, Abe Cahan.

Soyer:

But Dubinsky was very friendly with the Forward crowd. He occasionally wrote for the Forward.

Reuter:

Late -- no, he never worked for the --

Soyer:

He wrote, but he -- no, he wasn't on the staff, but he would have an article. I don't know if -- what language he wrote it in, or who really wrote --

Reuter:

Right.

Soyer:

-- but there were occasional articles signed by him in the Forward.

Reuter:

Yeah. Because that's how all the Jewish papers existed: that they had stringers who would supply stuff for them. But to consider Dubinsky a major part of the ongoing thing before 1930 just isn't really where it's at.

Soyer:

So do you think he became a strong -- was he a strong president, or was he --

Reuter:

He became a --

Soyer:

-- a really strong --

Reuter:

-- stronger president --

Soyer:

-- president for 30 years.

Reuter:

-- where -- as time went on, and then because of the times. It was a time for being able to organize and having ideas, and so on. But if you go back at the earlier part of the history, the strikes of the 1910s, there was no Dubinsky. There was no Dubinsky. He came along later. You know? And... one of the reasons for the trouble that the union now has in terms of its relationship to the merger and so on is because the union was never structured in a meaningful fashion that gave it its per- that gave it permanence. Nowhere else in the world were the garment unions separate unions. They were all one union. That only happened in the United States, and the reason for it was because there were all sorts of political shenanigans that went on.

Soyer:

Yeah. So how did that affect the permanence of the union? Eventually, they did emerge, the ILG and the Amalgamated --

Reuter:

When --

Soyer:

Too late?

Reuter:

-- things were already at a low ebb. At a very low ebb. By the time the merger came around, it was the ILG that had money but no membership, and the Amalgamated, which had membership by no money. But basically, the real problem that the union has now and has had for -- since these mergers have been going on is there isn't any of the

[35:00]

philosophy that pushes them out. Think about this. Harold Ostroff -- olev hasholem -- says to me at a meeting of the Forwards association, "And how can the ILG support a Pataki?" He was right. He was right! In recent years, the philosophy -- I mean, what does the Forwards today have in common with the union?

Soyer:

Well, as I got it at the meeting that we were both at, it doesn't take sides in elections, which I was a little surprised at. It's a little reticent to take sides. The union takes sides, but I think it's lost a lot of its old ideological edge.

Reuter:

And those who would have a political point of view are rapidly disappearing. You know, the fact that... I mean, a Bernie Bellush is probably the last of the Mohicans in terms of having a philosophy background. And -- but he's also ancient at this point. And for that matter, you talk about the Forwards, the Workmen's Circle is even less so ideological. As a matter of fact, if you take a look at the leadership, they're all in business. Right? And it's a... how long is that going to remain around? I mean, all of the old-time socialist things that used to be around are gone. Whether it be the Labor Zionists, or... the communists, various setups, they're all gone. As a matter of fact -- what? -- the communist party's papers are now part of Tamiment?

Soyer:

Right. Well, even funnier than that, I think, is that Jewish Currents has became the organ of the Workmen's Circle.

Reuter:

Yes! Very much --

Soyer:

That's very funny. (laughter)

Reuter:

-- so. Very much so. Very much so.

Soyer:

And that's a -- I think you're right -- is a symptom of their having shrunk so much that they have no choice but to make up.

Reuter:

No. But if you look at Currents, you see that they still have more of an ideology and are able to translate it in Currents than the outfit that took over the Currents. I mean, what leadership does the Workmen's Circle have that has any sort of socialist background?

Soyer:

Well, there's a fewer -- there's a few people who have kind of "New Left-y" kind of backgrounds. Which is already 40 years ago, you know, so these --

Reuter:

Right!

Soyer:

-- are not so --

Reuter:

Right!

Soyer:

They're middle-aged people who come out of the New Left, I think.

Reuter:

Yeah. And have a background that is an anathema to me. I mean, to have Muravchik's son as a spokesman for socialist things? Excuse me?

Soyer:

Well, he -- but he's not a spokesman for the Workmen's Circle.

Reuter:

What?

Soyer:

He's not -- he doesn't work with the Workmen's Circle.

Reuter:

No, but he hovers with the Perle crowd, etc., etc. Right?

Soyer:

Yeah.

Reuter:

I mean --

Soyer:

And we're getting way

[40:00]

ahead of ourselves here.

Reuter:

Yeah.

Soyer:

So let's go back. So you left the UN, and you ran into Sasha Zimmerman.

Reuter:

And he got me involved --

Soyer:

And he got you this job --

Reuter:

-- with the union.

Soyer:

-- with the Dress -- the Joint Dress Board. But you weren't in education at the Joint Board. You were --

Reuter:

I was --

Soyer:

-- assistant manager.

Reuter:

-- Hochman's assistant.

Soyer:

Tell me something about Hochman. How was he to work for?

Reuter:

Very, very tough to work for. Had the long history of being able to get along with people. But a very brilliant guy who was a good union officer, and meant a good deal earlier than I was involved with the union. Hochman had been the general manager of both joint boards, meaning Dress and Cloak, at one point. And was not... politically left wing. He was more of a trade unionist than anything else. As were -- well, I don't know. You had a whole mixture. You had a mixture of people who were involved with anarchists, which is the -- a history that has been very poorly written about... the... But Hochman was a good union officer who was very tough to work for. He knew what he wanted; he had ideas; he... If you worked for Hochman, you earned your keep.

Soyer:

What were your duties?

Reuter:

All sorts of things. He used to make me go and check on some of the not so much kosher employers. But more important, probably the single most important thing that I did for Hochman -- because I didn't work for him that long -- was to prepare him for negotiations. Which was an ordeal unto itself, because he had a very strange way of doing things, and you prepared him for his negotiation by doing different things so that different stages of the negotiations were down in writing, and you were well prepared. And my eventual falling out, and subsequently friendship with Hochman, came as a result of my walking out on Hochman.

Soyer:

How'd that happen?

Reuter:

Well, it was over a nego- preparing for negotiations. And what happened was very simply that he would -- I would prepare something, and then he would change it to the next stage of the negotiations, etc., etc. Came to the eighth or ninth exemplar of preparation, and he asked me to do the same thing I had done the first time around, and I said, "I've done that already." And I slammed the door on him, and... So for the next two or three years we didn't talk to each other, although we passed each other in the hallway. And yet -- and this gives you a measure of who these people were -- when I eventually was recommended to the International, Dubinsky said to me, "And you know you are going to have to get permission from your boss." I said, "Whoa! We don't talk!" And he knew that we hadn't talked, and so on. Eventually, he throws a letter at me that Julius has written with a glowing recommendation. I think -- you know, it was the kind of a caliber of officer that you had that... to whom the union was the important thing. And I can go down the list of people who I dealt with in the union.

[45:00]

One was better than the other. They really were very substantive people with a lot of background. And it's too bad that not more has been written about them, because each one of them had something to contribute. I mean, the officers, the top officers of the ILG, were real caliber people who -- I mean, think about the notion that some of them were city councilmen. How'd that happen? Some of them were state assemblymen, right? And still did their union job. It's a different world, that that world long ago went. Not very far past the Second World War, all of this went out of existence. And there's very little -- there's none of that left. I mean, for instance, the papers write about Raynor -- this guy has no background. And the truth of the matter is, the amount of background in the rest of the labor movement is part of its problem.

Soyer:

So who else was on the staff of the Joint Board at the time that you... ?

Reuter:

Oh... you had Murray Gross who was Hochman's official assistant. You had a whole bunch of officers. Remember that they were -- the Joint Board was a huge organization, with different aspects of the union. So... the Joint Board had at least a half a dozen, if not more, managers, each one of them having been somebody. And you had the same setup in the Cloak Joint Board. These were all substantive people who had gotten to places by scratching and scratching very hard, and doing a union job.

Soyer:

How much contact did you have at the time with the membership?

Reuter:

A lot. A lot. There were a lot of things that we did with the membership. There was an ongoing educational setup which went back to the late 'tens and early 'twenties. And at one point, Juliet Poyntz was the education director. She was a member of the communist party. But there was always a history in the ILG of very substantial educational work, as differentiated from the Amalgamated.

Soyer:

How about involvement -- well, so -- well, what were they being educated for? That's a question about --

Reuter:

For union leadership.

Soyer:

For union leadership?

Reuter:

Union leadership. I mean, there was real training going on in terms of chairladies, in terms of various aspects of things, and so on. The finances of the union were audited by committees of rank and filers. And it was not done superficially. The committees had an official function.

Soyer:

What other -- how else was the membership involved in running the union, the locals or the Joint Board?

Reuter:

The elections were run by the members. The...

[50:00]

union was involved in doing all sorts of things. I mean, when you think about that the union put on a... show -- it was a show; it was nothing other than that -- called Pins and Needles -- which ran for over a thousand shows. And, you know, the union was very much involved. Roosevelt came down to see a performance.

Soyer:

That was before your time here, though?

Reuter:

Yes. Very much so. The union had a guy that ran Labor Stage. Labor Stage --

Soyer:

Was Labor Stage still in existence?

Reuter:

-- was an ILG operation.

Soyer:

Was that still in existence in the late 'forties, or not?

Reuter:

Yes and no. It eventually -- the union did different things, which was part of the invention. I mean, the union put out a film for the 50th anniversary called With These Hands, a major, major operation that got worldwide attention. The film was distributed by USIA, meaning that whatever it was got attention. And there were other things that went on. I mean, each -- most of the locals had their own newspapers, with their own staff, and they didn't get permission -- they ran the papers. You know? So there were a lot of things going on in the union that... involved the membership. And it was because of a historic background of guys like Sasha Zimmerman, who was naturally inclined to have the membership participate. And that kind of thing went on in other places in the union. And by the time the union started spreading out in the 'thirties into the hinterlands, they were essentially doing very much the kind of thing that had been done in the older centers of the union. You know?

Soyer:

Was it -- you know, by the late 'forties, 'fifties, the ethnic composition of the union was changing, of the membership. Fewer Jews. Most of the officers were still Jews, right?

Reuter:

Well --

Soyer:

And --

Reuter:

-- the truth of the --

Soyer:

-- there were more Italians --

Reuter:

-- matter is --

Soyer:

-- and more Puerto Ricans

Reuter:

-- that in the 'fifties, you still had Jewish locals and Spanish locals, Italian locals... I mean, Local 89 was a very substantial union of, at one point, I would think, 100,000 members.

Soyer:

But Local 89 was officially Italian, Italian language... But there was never an official Spanish-language or even official Yiddish-language locals.

Reuter:

Yes, there was. The truth of the matter is that at -- remember that at one point, you had a Yiddish paper, the Fr-- OK?

Soyer:

Gerekhtikayt.

Reuter:

Yeah. You had a Yiddish paper, and for short times, Spanish papers. Not the same way, but the Yiddish paper was a substantial paper with its own editor and what have you.

Soyer:

But that was the International. But on the local -- I know there were locals which did their business in Yiddish, too.

Reuter:

Yeah.

Soyer:

But let's say even the Spanish-speaking workers were coming in. Were there locals which were mainly Spanish speaking, and which did a lot of

[55:00]

Spanish speaking --

Reuter:

No.

Soyer:

-- and publishing?

Reuter:

The Local 22 ended up grabbing off Spanish members. And the union was changing. But it changed because the union let it change. For instance, Local 22 had its own Spanish person handling member stuff. And pretty much, in an earlier day, the same thing happened with Afro-Americans. You know, there's a whole history of the union having been very much a melting pot type of thing. And at one time in the Cloak Joint Board, you had various locals who had -- whose origin originated out of the work the workers were doing. So you -- I mean, there's a whole mixture of things that at one time existed, and what -- it kept missing in later years is that some of this stuff just didn't continue. I am not sure that the kind of different kinds of locals that we once had necessarily was a bad thing. And what we're talking about is some sort of mixture that existed not only in New York, but in the hinterlands. I mean, we had a shop in Provo, Utah; the shop put out its own paper. They weren't the only ones. It was a big shop, so it was more significant. But the nature of the union as such was duplicated in the older markets, and to some degree, became duplicated in the newer markets.

Soyer:

To hear -- well, even in the older markets, you read about in the early 'sixties -- like '61 and '62 -- there was the big case about -- there was the suit of the cutter, Ernest Holmes, against the union for discrimination, and the NAACP, Herbert Hill was criticizing --

Reuter:

Yeah, but --

Soyer:

-- the union --

Reuter:

-- Herb Hill was doing his own thing. The kind of accusations of discriminations that were thrown around I think were pretty effectively answered by Gus Tyler. And the truth of the matter is it served Herb Hill's purposes, and frankly, eventually it got him a job at a university. But I don't know whether... I mean, what discrimination went on? The nature... I mean, the truth of the matter is you were dealing basically with a low-end union, which didn't make for happy days, but was better without the -- than no union. I mean, you can never say that -- other than for cutters and pressers, you can never say that workers in this union made out great.

[1:00:00]

And one of the reasons for it was that -- my prejudice says that part of the problem was that it -- the American labor movement never had any of the background of labor movements in other countries.

Soyer:

When you say "background," you mean... ?

Reuter:

Political background.

Soyer:

But this union did. That -- didn't it?

Reuter:

Did it really? Did it really? Did it really? There's nothing in this union that paralleled, for instance, the English labor movement setup. And the early history of the union does not suggest that that's what they were interested in. They weren't -- the philosophical outlook of the American labor movement never got to the point where it had a political... thing going for it.

Soyer:

Now, so you were working for Hochman at the Joint Board. You were --

Reuter:

Right.

Soyer:

-- assistant to the manager. And then you were -- you moved to International, to the educational --

Reuter:

Right.

Soyer:

Tell me about that, how that happened, and the...

Reuter:

Well, that happened basically because I found out that Mark Starr was making moves to retire, and what they were in need of is somebody to take Mark's place. And Mark was a very important person to the union in terms of education at this time, because he not only was highly respected by the membership, but he reached out to the rest of the community. You know, he had tremendous respect in the "goyshe" community, because basically, he was a "goy". Not "basically" -- he was a "goy".

Soyer:

He's also -- was he British also?

Reuter:

Yes. He came out of the mine workers. Which is one of the reasons I suspect that I was acceptable, because of the background, etc., etc.

Soyer:

So you became the educational director of the union?

Reuter:

For a short time. And later on, I moved out of education to the union proper. Back in the Seventies, I took over... a substantial part of the benefits structure of the union. I was the administrator of the Northeast Department Health and Welfare Fund.

Soyer:

So that was in the --

Reuter:

Which --

Soyer:

That was in the Seventies?

Reuter:

That was in the Seventies, yeah

Soyer:

But you became -- you were in the Education department from the Fifties?

Reuter:

In the Fifties. And we -- Northeast Department had a lot of educational things going on. In fact, many of the locals had their own education person. Paid! Paid. There was a history to education, working in the Northeast Department. And the Northeast Department, you have to remember, had a membership of very close to 100,000 members. Which was spread between New England and Pennsylvania. o there was ongoing -- and through my involvement with education, we also were able to do things for the membership in terms of benefits when things went wrong, and so on. It was a... it put a different face on things, and... Basically, the union operated differently in the hinterlands.

Soyer:

How so?

[1:05:00]

Reuter:

Well, it was a different kind of setup. In New York, we had -- we ran our own show. Out of town, we worked with other people. We worked with Blue Cross; we worked with all sorts of people. And we had our own setup. At one point, part of the operation that I headed up, the Northeast Department, the ILGW Health and Welfare Fund, had four health centers. And had a couple of paramedical groups going into shops. It was a very different operation, and we adapted things to -- that this wasn't New York. It wasn't Chicago. It wasn't St. Louis.

Soyer:

So it had to do with the density of the membership and the density of --

Reuter:

It was different membership; it -- the whole demographics were different. And the union adapted.

Soyer:

You say the demographics were different.

Reuter:

Well, because what happened was my setup in Northeast Department involved 97,000 members, and their families. And we provided all sorts of benefits for them. We provided vacation checks for them. We provided sick benefits for them. And all sorts of facilities that didn't exist in the older centers. It was a diff- you were serving a different kind of membership, in any case.

Soyer:

But how was it different?

Reuter:

They were Americans.

Soyer:

They were Americans?

Reuter:

They were Americans. You know, it wasn't a foreign setup. What there was that was foreign did not have a foreign flavor. So it was a very different setup. And it required a different kind of work. I mean, when you think about the notion that by the time the Fifties came around, you were servicing 97,000 people, that's a huge number. And you provided all sorts of facilities. We handed out three vacation checks a year.

Soyer:

That was money that -- what? -- the employers paid into the -- a fund? And then you paid it out?

Reuter:

Right. You know? Now, that originally started in New York, but not as extensively as I am describing the Northeast Department.

Soyer:

It wasn't?

Reuter:

And you are now talking about Pennsylvania and New England, all of New England. And you had a presence that was different. I mean, in Fall River, for instance, you had membership that was Portuguese and French. Right? In Boston, you had a rein makers local. Developed out of history, and you adapted the setup to what your situation was in Boston. And you didn't make it part of the rest of Boston, which was an old market.

Soyer:

So was one of the differences -- I know in New York, there were a lot of tiny, tiny shops. I'm imagining that in some cases in out of town, there were some bigger --

Reuter:

In New York --

Soyer:

-- factories?

Reuter:

-- you also had some very big shops.

[1:10:00]

I mean, you had a firm up in the Thirties, Max Wiesen; there must have been 400 or 500 workers in that shop. Right? There were -- and the nature of the business was different. The nature of contractors and jobbers you have to put into the mix. But that was a different setup from what you had in a place like my original local in Pennsylvania, which had 10,000 members. That was a big local. Right? And it had its own characteristics. But we weren't able to maintain the kind of... thing that had put us on the map in the various places. You know, we weren't able to maintain -- largely because the nature of the workforce changed. And with that, a lot of other things changed.

Soyer:

So how did the nature of the workforce change, and how did that change other things?

Reuter:

Well, what happens is that you end up having escaped New York, so you get a different kind of shop in an Easton or a Reading, or a Harrisburg. And the membership isn't the same. The membership isn't the same, you know, they're all English-speaking.

Soyer:

Right. Now, how does that influence how the union works?

Reuter:

It -- we weren't able to maintain the kind of setup that -- which had brought this all about. Somebody ought to write a book about why this industry doesn't exist anymore. And the chances are that if it's properly written, what would be found is that the union's leadership changed, and we weren't able to deal with things in the same manner as we always did.

Soyer:

So you --

Reuter:

There has been no real social treatise written that made it possible for things to be done in China.

Soyer:

So, but a lot of it had to do with these -- the problem of imports, right? I mean, that the industry -- well, do you think that a different leadership of the union could have done better at maintaining the industry here?

Reuter:

My usual comment on that is no, we couldn't have done as well as we were doing, but the demise would have been much slower. You know, that's standard comment on my part. And I think that's true.

Soyer:

When did you start noticing that there was a decline?

Reuter:

I think it started -- and I don't think anybody would agree with this -- I think it started with the union seeing that it needed an institute to get staff. And... the institute wasn't the great thing that Dubinsky always said it was.

[1:15:00]

You've got to be able to do things that -- I mean, this union, for instance, never organized Los Angeles. How come? Is there something wrong with the Mexican population? And what was different about them than the earlier Jews, Italians, and what have you? You know, I -- the union did not do anything to maintain its base. Other unions haven't, either. But I think that there was more to this union than what was eventually left. And the end result is -- and then the other part of the story is... that we have created a fiction. For instance, with the current goings-on with Raynor, among the things that he's given credit for is that he was the chief organizer, and put J. P. Stevens on the map. It's a lie! It's an absolute lie! That isn't what happened, at all!

Soyer:

What happened?

Reuter:

Right? The nature of J. P. Stevens changed, but the union kept on spending oodles and oodles of money to organize J. P. Stevens. But that's not an answer to -- when we eventually organized J. P. Stevens, it was a different firm than we had started organizing. And then J. P. Stevens wasn't organized as such: a factory of J. P. Stevens was organized. The whole Stevens story is not true. And... the union leadership, to some degree, has also sold out the membership. I mean, we just got rid of a pants manufacturer in San Francisco. Sure people got some money and so on. But this was the original firm that was organized a hundred years ago Why couldn't we maintain that?

Soyer:

Well, why? I mean, that's the question. I mean, why was the union not able to adjust?

Reuter:

Because the union didn't have the leadership, and you had a different kind -- the current union leadership has about as much sense about organizing -- they keep on talking about organizing, but what they really know about organizing is very little. I mean, this "organization for change" has been a total failure. And it's predictable it would be. You know?

Soyer:

Do you think they're too top-down? Is that the problem? Or they don't involve more rank and file? There aren't --

Reuter:

There is not --

Soyer:

They don't train people?

Reuter:

-- there isn't any of the -- I have a friend of mine who is president of a building trades union. They have essentially seen no change in the union. Their membership is steady, etc., etc. How come? How come? The answer is that they're maintaining their -- the thing that gave them structure, and... the ILG hasn't done that. Right now, right now,

[1:20:00]

the convention was four years ago -- do you know the membership hasn't gotten a financial statement? That's unheard of! That's unheard of.

Soyer:

And when did this process start? Was it under Dubinsky, or was it when he retired? Was it later?

Reuter:

It's part of - that the Dubinsky type of leadership just ain't no more. It's like this: Dubinsky's successor inherited the mantle very late in life, and so wasn't able -- a capable officer who just got into the job too late. And after that, you went downhill, because I always said that Dubinsky's successor will live under the Dubinsky umbrella. And then that's the end of the story. I predicted that 20 years ago, and more.

Soyer:

Now, you've said -- you've mentioned the training institute for the staff. Were you in the Education department at that time?

Reuter:

It was a --

Soyer:

Were you at --

Reuter:

-- separate institution. It was a separate institution that was an invention of Dubinsky's -- and a couple of other people. And you can make the case for the institute, but I don't -- I think the institute demonstrated a problem. The institute demonstrated that the union could not bring forth its own staff. When I came into the union, every one of the officers -- I was thinking whether that's true, but I think it is -- had come out of the rank and file. So how come all of a sudden you need an institute?

Soyer:

The institute was designed to bring in young outsiders, college-educated people, into the union. But why didn't they trust the workers? Why did they create an institute for -- you said before that the -- a lot of the education was to train leadership from the workers.

Reuter:

Because by that time, we had become a different union, and Dubinsky was going to continue to run the union his way, and... So this was an invention that was found, and you'll hear all sorts of positive things said about it. I'm not sure whether that's legit.

Soyer:

How about the FOUR episode: the Federation of Union Representatives? You --

Reuter:

I had a run-in several times with Dubinsky on FOUR. I didn't join FOUR. And... but at one point, I got into a spat with Dubinsky where I said to him -- I think I almost remember my words word-for-word -- I said, "You created the monster." Because he really was more at home with other people, and how dare these people usurp... But he never recognized that he had created the monster.

Soyer:

Because the FOUR people were the people from the institute? Is that what it was, or... ?

Reuter:

Yeah. Many of them.

[1:25:00]

Somewhere along the line, a lot of things that happened -- and you've got to get into the minute differences -- wouldn't have happened had the union had a different history.

Soyer:

Which part of the history?

Reuter:

Somewhere along the line... Look: Dubinsky was president for too long to begin with. And thereby hangs the beginning of the problem. There were -- he was not capable of letting go. The guy was around for 33 years! So what's left after that? And by the way, what is interesting is that I'm right about that for a very simple reason: that other organizations have run into the same problem with the same kind of characteristics. Workmen's Circle isn't far different. Workmen's Circle isn't far distant. And look at all the organizations that have been wiped out who had a similar kind of leadership. The Farband, Poale Zion... you know? The kind of organization with the kind of philosophical and other background... did not permit the kind of... inventive leadership that you need. Look: the Workmen's Circle Home had a guy for forever also; same problem. Same problem! And by the way, Workmen's Circle Home is not the same as the Workmen's Circle. They're two separate organizations. But you can't -- you know, to suggest that the Workmen's Circle Home is the same institution? No! It had as its head a guy who was another Dubinsky. Who else? United Housing Foundation. Kazan was the same -- of the same make. They are the seeds of the destruction of the organizations they headed.

Soyer:

Because they stuck around too long?

Reuter:

And didn't permit --

Soyer:

Didn't adapt?

Reuter:

Didn't permit others to move in.

Soyer:

So a lot of -- you know, this is interesting, because of a lot of people, when you read the histories of the union -- not Gus Tyler's history, but other people writing it -- they often couch this in ethnic or racial terms. Right? In the Sixties, there was a -- you know, it was they were trying to keep out the Puerto Ricans, the African-Americans, from the leadership of the union. But you think it was just a small group or one guy who kept out everyone? (laughter)

Reuter:

You'll see what I've just said to you: wherever you turn up, you turn up a guy that has these characteristics. OK?

Soyer:

Now, weren't you -- wasn't there a suit or something in which your name figured? It was around FOUR; that you -- whether you were, I guess, part of the bargaining unit or not part of the bargaining unit, or something like this.

Reuter:

Yeah. But I personally said I -- Dubinsky knew very clearly that I was for FOUR, but not officially. I think that some of the leadership of FOUR was poor. And it didn't

[1:30:00]

have the kind of leadership that could've made a difference.

Soyer:

But you never joined?

Reuter:

No.

Soyer:

Why was that?

Reuter:

Because it didn't fit. And Dubinsky wasn't throwing me out of the union. You know, the -- under normal circumstances, I should have been thrown out of the union. But I wasn't.

Soyer:

Just for criticizing him, you mean? Or... ?

Reuter:

I did it in public! I did it in public! It wasn't a private conversation. And it wasn't the only time that I had a set-to with Dubinsky. But between me and Dubinsky, there was a certain rapport. And I guess the rapport worked. I once had an organizing situation, Judy Bond, and I pretty well ran the campaign. And... he called me in, and there three or four other people sitting around, and he was now going to read the riot act to me. "Who gave me permission to be the spokesman for the union?" -- all sorts of things. So... I had some allies in the room that he had -- wasn't quite sure of, where Leon Stein was there, a guy by the name of Harry Crone, and so on. And I said, "Well, Dubinsky, if you don't like what I did, I can undo it." And he turns to Crone and Leon Stein and he says, "Can he do that and not run the story?" They said, "Yeah, he's got the relationship." He says, "But that's my contact at Women's Wear." (laughter) And they look at him and says, "He can do it." So I did what he wanted and so on, walked back, walked back, and the story was over. It didn't exist anymore. Because I had made my point, and he wasn't going to do anything about me. I always had that kind of relationship with Dubinsky. It wasn't a new kind of -- when I first was hired by Dubinsky, Dubinsky said, "Now, how long are you going to keep that job?" And my answer to him was, "Here, I'm the new employee on the block, right?" I says, "I don't quite know. But for the time being, I'll take it." And there are other things that happened with me and Dubinsky. I got away with things, and I got away with things because there was a certain amount of respect -- not just respect for the sake of respect, but based on performance. And that's the point: we had people who performed, and you knew -- without Dubinsky ever saying, you knew that he thought you were part of his army, and that he had a very exceptional army. And while he wouldn't say so, privately, he was very proud of his private army. Now, that you couldn't do -- well, I suppose you did duplicate it to a small degree in the case of Stulberg, but there was nothing after Stulberg. There was a person who took over to whom his own self was more important than anything that involved the union. But what am I

[1:35:00]

saying? What I'm telling you is something that is not that uncommon. You know, organizations exist as long as they serve a useful function. Once they don't anymore, their days are numbered.

Soyer:

Do you think it would have been -- you -- if you had joined FOUR, it would have been a different story with Dubinsky? Really?

Reuter:

No. Because the rest of FOUR wasn't anything to write home about. It wasn't anything to write home about. I never hid my -- where I belonged. I was secretary of the education local of the AFT. Nobody ever said anything to -- said that that was wrong, even though I also held a membership in the ILG. Right?

Soyer:

Now, the AFT represents the educational workers in the ILG?

Reuter:

It did --

Soyer:

It did?

Reuter:

-- when I was secretary. It did when I was secretary.

Soyer:

It had contracts with... ?

Reuter:

Yes and no. Yes and no. We always got, in the early days, the same inquiries as the rest of the officers got. So the contract was not that essential. The union was pretty good, and became less so as time went on, when people other than those who we're talking about were in the union. It was a different union. When I came into the union... there were -- you would not be charged for days off. But you weren't charged for no reason at all. That's the kind of workforce we had. We didn't take off. We didn't do things. We all had a... philosophical outlook that was different.

Soyer:

Now, you mentioned or you said that one of the problems, you think, with the union was that -- or the American labor movement in general -- is that it doesn't -- people don't have the kind of background that they do, let's say, in Britain.

Reuter:

That's right.

Soyer:

But you did have that background. So I'm wondering how that kind of background influ-- like how did it influence what you did in the union? How -- did you -- when you were in the Education Department or when you were in the Northeast Department, your Labor Party background, your Fabian background, your British TUC background, did that -- were there any decisions you made or any kind of things that you set it up in a certain way because of that?

Reuter:

Yeah. We tried to instill in the membership a certain background. Unfortunately, we never had enough troops to do that properly. I believe that the problem with the labor movement is that it doesn't have the troops to make it a significant setup. OK? I just don't see the labor movement having the kind of verve to do things that it needs to do. For instance, I don't think that what the labor movement now is trying to do in terms of finding it easier to organize if it gets certain laws changed, I think there's something wrong with that setup. I think there's something wrong with

[1:40:00]

that setup. I think that if the labor movement had anything going for it, it wouldn't need that kind of thing. You know? I don't see the kind of leadership -- I think for my purposes, Sweeney has been a disappointment. Big disappointment. Because he came with the right background, but he got nowhere. I think it was a different labor movement when George Meany was the head of it.

Soyer:

You think he was better?

Reuter:

I don't know what "better" means, but he certainly headed a labor movement that was more significant. I think that that's -- means something. You either have to have a guy who is very solid, like Meany was, or else you've got to go back to my origins in the British labor movement, where you automatically have a certain amount of turnover, and the turnover gives you something that you can't get any other way. I don't think that -- I think the labor movement needs leadership that... says, "This guy is for me." I don't think that the average union member thinks that. And certainly that's true of UNITE and what have you. Now, it's not true of all unions. I think that some of the building trades still have something going for them, and that's one of the reasons why they remain basically what they are.

Soyer:

Right. You mentioned political issues. I want to get back -- before we turned on the recorder, you mentioned that you had run Javits's first campaigns, or you were involved in Javits's first campaigns?

Reuter:

Right.

Soyer:

So I want to hear a little bit about your political activities here.

Reuter:

Well, the reason why I was involved with Javits was because I lived in Washington Heights, and that district came from that area, and they're -- the Democrats were not going to provide the kind of leadership that Javits eventually gave. Plus, the fact that I knew a number of the people that I could count on, and... I knew how to run a campaign.

Soyer:

Now, how did you get in touch with him, though?

Reuter:

Because the Liberal Party was very much involved with him because the biggest club and the most active club of the Liberal Party was on Broadway and 181st Street. The Javits headquarters were a block away. A number of us who were involved with the Liberal Party automatically, therefore, when Javits became the candidate, went to him. And we supported also a local assemblyman, Sam Roman. And did so successfully. Right? And we ran a campaign that was run knowledgably and with... an idea of where we were heading.

[1:45:00]

I mean, our campaign was a classic campaign, in that we -- one of the things that helped us was the fact that Javits's brother provided the wherewithal to get some of the troops for doing a job.

Soyer:

And you say "wherewithal," you mean money?

Reuter:

Money.

Soyer:

OK. (laughter)

Reuter:

I mean, after we lost, we recruited Columbia students to do doorbell ringing for the next two years. We had an ongoing office that would help people, etc., etc., all sorts of machinery that made it possible for Javits --

Soyer:

This was the --

Reuter:

-- to win.

Soyer:

-- Liberal Party Club, or a separate Javits --

Reuter:

Javits separate headquarters. It was illegal for the Liberal Party Club to get involved with that.

Soyer:

OK. How did you join the Liberal Party?

Reuter:

In the ILG, we all were involved with the Liberal Party. After all, Dubinsky was the vice chairman.

Soyer:

Did you have any choice in the matter?

Reuter:

I don't know that that's an appropriate question. I think we got involved because we wanted to. Nobody dragooned us. It was the thing: the ILG was involved politically. And we were a significant outfit. Plus the fact that the Democrats didn't have such a hot candidate, that helped also.

Soyer:

Was there any kind of a queasiness about backing a Republican?

Reuter:

I don't think so. Because Jack never operated like a Republican. And the people we worked with didn't operate like the -- we worked for Jack Javits. So that was a different situation altogether. You know?

Soyer:

You know, I'm very interested in the Liberal Party, so I'm wondering with Javits -- or with anyone else, not just Javits -- but what did you see as the main benefit of having an independent party like that that was kind of like a --

Reuter:

Not --

Soyer:

-- labor party?

Reuter:

-- really. And those of us who worked for the Liberal Party weren't super-enthused with the people who ran the Liberal Party, like Ben Davidson, and things of that sort. We ran it because that was our local show. That was our local show.

Soyer:

The club, you mean?

Reuter:

Yeah.

Soyer:

How much -- I'm interested in the dynamics between the club and the leadership of the party. Was it a very top-down party, or were you --

Reuter:

It was non-existent. Because once we got the go-ahead to run the campaign after the lost campaign, this all ran by itself because we put the machinery in place. And the Liberal Party Club may have been all right for the big shots, because that Liberal Party Club was a unique club, because who was in it? All the big shots in the Liberal Party were in that club.

Soyer:

I know Alex Rose lived up there.

Reuter:

Alex Rose was the majordomo. And Sasha Zimmerman was involved, and so on. So, but --

Soyer:

People like that -- did Alex Rose come to meetings of the club?

Reuter:

Oh, yeah.

Soyer:

Yeah?

Reuter:

Oh, yeah. Alex Rose ran things. And there were other people in the Millinery Workers Union who also were involved. But one of the reasons why Alex was involved is he lived on Cabrini Boulevard. And Zimmerman lived up there.

[1:50:00]

I mean, that clubhouse had a natural leadership.

Soyer:

But then it was very tied into the main -- the top leadership of the party.

Reuter:

Yeah. Yeah.

Soyer:

How long were you active in the Liberal Party? The entire time?

Reuter:

I remained friendly with Jack to the end, to the point where he was sick and contracted Lou Gehrig's Disease and what have you. I mean, to the last days I used to get a note from him, and so on. It was a very... it was a positive thing, because the Democratic Party in the area was a crummy party.

Soyer:

Was there any times where you went to Javits and you convinced him of anything that he wasn't already convinced of that he should... ?

Reuter:

No, I think Jack was very much involved with the things that we were for. When Jack eventually became the Attorney General of New York state, he pursued legislation that we were all very much for, and we could reach him regularly. And that was the history of that department, because we had that same kind of relationship with Louis Lefkowitz, who was a Democrat.

Soyer:

I think he was a Republican also.

Reuter:

Oh, he was a Republican -- I'm sorry. But Louis Lefkowitz we had a very friendly relationship with. If we had a problem and Louie was -- had been involved, we could count on him. And --

Soyer:

For what kind of problem?

Reuter:

Oh, we once -- I once had a -- I once got a call from Louis, furious that the Republican agriculture minister had undone some legislation that we had supported, and so on. And Lefkowitz was just livid. And we went to town, and we redid it, and an agriculture commissioner got bounced.

Soyer:

So he -- this was under Rockefeller, or... ?

Reuter:

Oh, yeah.

Soyer:

So you went to Lefkowitz to exert influence on Rockefeller?

Reuter:

No! Lefkowitz came to us! Because Louis was very much for a lot of consumer legislation. He ran a good u- he ran as good a setup as Jack Javits did in that office.

Soyer:

You were a leader of a metropolitan consumer council, the New York -- what was it called?

Reuter:

Right.

Soyer:

"The Consumers Council?"

Reuter:

"Metropolitan New York Consumer Council."

Soyer:

Right. Tell me about that operation.

Reuter:

Well, we were able to establish a consumer presence -- with a lot of trouble, because a lot of people weren't what they -- what the public thought they were. For instance, Bess Myerson and I had a lot of bouts. Right? But we had an unusual -- I mean, there was a time when New York State was in the frontlines of consumer legislation. One of the reasons for it was that we were very active.

Soyer:

Was the consumer council -- was the union connected to the Consumers Council? Or was the Liberal Party connected to the Consumers Council? Or is this separate?

Reuter:

No, the Consumer --

Soyer:

Just a separate activity?

Reuter:

-- Council was a separate organization, and involved people who... weren't necessarily either Liberal Party or anything else. I mean, it had a wider appeal than just the politics. And we were able to get legislation passed.

[1:55:00]

New York is no longer the leader in consumer legislation, and the reason for it is that we were not able to maintain -- again, because the organizations that composed the council are not the same kind of people that were there when we stated. Remember that among -- there was a different kind of leadership around: a Sidney Margolis was around; a guy who was the executive director of the New York State Credit Union setup -- you know, it -- the council packed a lot of wallop.

Soyer:

Who was Sidney Margolis? I don't know who that... ?

Reuter:

Sidney Margolis was a columnist who ran -- had a labor column in -- and cartoons in the Labor Press. He had originally been a reporter for PM. And when PM folded, he took on this... cartoon that appeared on a regular basis in the Labor Press. And there were a lot of people around; the guy who was the editor of the IAM international paper was involved with us. I mean, there were a lot of people who really counted.

Soyer:

So the Consumers Council was very tied in with the labor movement, the general --

Reuter:

Yeah. Yeah. No doubt about it.

Soyer:

Is there any -- so when did you retire from the union?

Reuter:

About ten, 12 years ago.

Soyer:

So you were here through the merger with Amalgamated?

Reuter:

Almost. Almost.

Soyer:

How did you feel about that.

Reuter:

Not very well, because I knew the Amalgamated had lots of trouble going way, way back to the 1910s. And they were not in love with each other. Plus the fact that I knew some of the leadership in the Amalgamated who I didn't have too much respect for. And wouldn't trust. I mean, there is that kind of a background to the Amalgamated that you seldom hear about. I mean, everybody talks about Hillman, but nobody talks about people like Hollander and things of that sort. Plus the --

Soyer:

Well, what is it about --

Reuter:

-- fact that I knew a great deal about the Amalgamated. My wife was an officer of the Amalgamated. You know? In fact, at one point, Louis Hollander offered her a job and she says -- I remember her words exactly: she says, "Mr. Hollander, I'd sooner give you a hard time than you give me a hard time." And that was --

Soyer:

Well, what was wrong with Hollander?

Reuter:

He wasn't trustworthy. And there had been a lot of unhappy history in the Amalgamated going back to the 1910s. There was an earlier fight in the Amalgamated that involved a guy by the name of Schlossberg, who was the secretary-treasurer of one of the older unions that eventually became the Amalgamated. And the job they did on Joe Schlossberg was unbelievable. Now, we're talking about a long time ago. So about 1910, 1911, thereabouts.

Soyer:

So your wife was an officer of the Amalgamated?

Reuter:

Yeah. Rather unusual local of the Amalgamated, in that they

[2:00:00]

did their own negotiating. And the business agent was their business agent rather than the union's business agent.

Soyer:

So the Amalgamated was more top-down, you think, than the ILG? Or less decentralized?

Reuter:

It's a different kind of union. A different kind of union. A completely different setup, even though you could throw a picture and say they were the same as we were. But they really weren't. It was a different kind of union, which was one of the reasons why they were separate. And there's a history to all of this, you know, that is missing in our conversation, and that is... the union that, for instance, Raynor comes out of -- which was the textile workers -- never had anything but fights from the day they were established.

Soyer:

By "fights," you mean internal fights, or... ?

Reuter:

Internal fights. War. And that's the -- you know, part of this story.

Soyer:

So how -- you know, maybe just -- so your wife -- you worked for the ILG, your wife worked for the Amalgamated. How did this labor involvement influence your household, your marriage, and your family life?

Reuter:

It didn't.

Soyer:

It didn't at all?

Reuter:

It didn't. Because they were running a very different union from the rest of the Amalgamated.

Soyer:

But I mean, just the -- not so much the conflict, but just the labor involvement. I mean, were your children brought up feeling like they were also part of the labor movement?

Reuter:

Yeah.

Soyer:

Or was it a separate kind of thing?

Reuter:

No, no. My kids, from the time they went to school, never crossed a picket line. And not because their mother and I said so. It was, that's the feeling they had. So, you know, that's the history.

Soyer:

Were you involved in anything else -- any other political things besides the Liberal Party? Were you involved in the socialist movement here, or not so much?

Reuter:

Not really. Other than that I would every once in a while have occasion to meet Norman Thomas for various and sundry things. And people around Norman Thomas were friends of mine. Harry what's-his-name --

Soyer:

Fleischman?

Reuter:

Fleischman. But that's all ancient history. And it hasn't been captured. I don't know whether Harry -- Harry did a book or something.

Soyer:

He did a book about Norman Thomas.

Reuter:

Right.

Soyer:

A biography of Norman Thomas. But were you still with the Liberal Party when Alex Rose died in the 'seventies and Harding took over?

Reuter:

No. No. In any case, Alex was an accident. They had people who had a socialist background. There was -- oh, what's the name of the guy? I can't think of it. There was a guy who was very much involved with the socialist movement who could have just as easily taken over the presidency of the union. And in any case, the hatters that Alex came out of weren't the strongest part of the union -- the millinery workers were. And the millinery workers had a socialist leadership. It didn't do so well toward the end, and ran into trouble with the way they financed their retirement setup, but that's another story.

Soyer:

Is there anything else that you --

Reuter:

No, not really.

Soyer:

-- think should be mentioned?

Reuter:

I mean, part of what is missing in this whole story is that you are talking about six or eight different unions that should have been one outfit, and had they been, would what we were talking about

[2:05:00]

be very different.

Soyer:

And that goes back to nine- like you said, 1910, 1911, 1912... even further.

Reuter:

Well, no. The -- I mean, some of them were still arou-- are still around! Nothing to write home about, but... Part of the problem is that you are seeing, in what we're talking about, what is wrong with the labor movement. Right? That's the bottom line. And I don't know... what would have happened had we been one union. Or whether that was at all possible. Because history tells me it wasn't.

Soyer:

The few years before the merger, was there ever any talk about merging --

Reuter:

No.

Soyer:

-- that you were aware of?

Reuter:

No, no. The truth of the matter is, the merger was all a matter of my friend next door wanting to be the head of a larger union. He didn't have to do any of that. If he had left things along, the ILG would still exist, because it had the resources. But it was a personal matter, and I can then go from there and prove to you how personal this is.

Soyer:

Well, how -- I mean, how did he drag everyone else along? He couldn't have done it by himself, right?

Reuter:

He did! He did! To the last day that they threw -- when they threw him out of the bank, he thought that that couldn't happen.He thought that couldn't happen! We all knew that it was going to happen, but he didn't know it. And I can tell other stories.

Soyer:

Tell me another story.

Reuter:

I mean, Jay and I are -- have been friends for a very long time, but some of these things, he did all the wrong things. And that's part of the story of what's wrong. The labor movement hasn't done any of the right things. Take a look. They form -- Raynor formed this combination with the hotel workers, and then went into it with the SEIU -- what have they accomplished? What have they accomplished? And one of the reasons why the labor movement ain't what it used to be is because you haven't got the kind of leadership -- name me three or four union presidents outside of the ones we've talked about.

Soyer:

Wilhelm, Stern...

Reuter:

(laughter) Look who you're coming up with.

Soyer:

The... now I don't remember his name, (laughter) but from the UAW has been in the news lately -- Gettelfinger?

Reuter:

Yeah.

Soyer:

That's about it.

Reuter:

But are you telling me that Gettelfinger's performance in terms of what's been going on is illustrious? He's selling out his members! He's selling out his members! That's leadership? You should pardon me. You get a different kind of performance -- and maybe you will interpret this differently than I do, but you get a different kind of feeling when I listen, whenever I can, to Brown, the English prime minister. There's still a feeling of -- that he stands for something. What do these people stand for? Huh? It's not a good story. And how long with all that is the Forwards going to be around?

[2:10:00]

Soyer:

It depends on the endowment. Right? It's all living off the endowment. Everything lives -- the Yiddish paper is completely, you know, subsidized, and the English paper loses money hands over fist also.

Reuter:

Right.

Soyer:

So they just have all the money saved up, which is now worth a lot less than it was a few months ago, and that's about it.

Reuter:

And should it be around?

Soyer:

You know, I'm going to turn off the tape recorder.

Reuter:

OK.

Soyer:

And now let's --

END OF PART 1



[00:00]

Reuter:

-- you would do that.

Soyer:

How would you write a history of the ILG outside of New York?

Reuter:

There's a lot of stuff around which is... the convention record, except for the last few years. To put that together and then flesh it out would probably give you a pretty good history of the ILG outside of New York. The -- I put together, for legal purposes... some of these pieces that are part of the convention proceedings. It's quite a volume. And the trick to it is that I think editing it and then filling out some pieces would give you a very interesting history.

Soyer:

Were you ever involved in organizing efforts outside New York City?

Reuter:

Yeah.

Soyer:

Directly?

Reuter:

Yeah. Sure. I headed up the Judy Bond campaign, which was a major campaign.

Soyer:

Tell me about the Judy Bond campaign.

Reuter:

By the time Judy Bond left New York, they were among the last of the blouse makers, and we all of a sudden got involved. And somebody (laughter) had to head up the campaign. But we lost a lot of opportunities like that. But they are recorded. They are recorded.

Soyer:

In the proceedings?

Reuter:

I don't know how good a history it would be, but it's better than nothing.

Soyer:

Right.

Reuter:

It's better than nothing. And if you wait around another couple of years, you will not be able to do it, because you've already lost a lot of the history. And you know, with each passing day, some more disappears. But in later years, there's a story to be told here. I don't know how you would do that, but it strikes me there's a lot of stuff there. And it's all there! It's all there. And is it going to be a good history? No. Because it'll be a history of -- the way the union wanted it written, and so on. But it's a better history than you would get out of the most recent few years.

Soyer:

Right. What was the biggest challenge in the Judy Bond campaign?

Reuter:

That they were the last of the Mohicans!

Soyer:

Right. Were you afraid that they would move overseas if you... ?

Reuter:

They moved out of New York. They moved out of New York. And that was the end of it.

Soyer:

But you went after them, no? I mean --

Reuter:

I went after them, and had some success at beating them up.

Soyer:

Right. But did you -- were you able to make a contract with them?

Reuter:

No. No, because once -- (laughter) there were -- used to be four or five large blouse manufacturers. This was the last of the Mohicans. You don't win when that happens. And there is no doubt

[05:00]

that if a real history were written of that strike, the manager of Local 25 would be held responsible for us losing that campaign, because he woke up (laughter) when everything had already escaped the barn. Story to be told there, too.

Soyer:

Tell me that story. (laughter)

Reuter:

Well, hey, he was busy with other things, including the stock market, rather than Judy Bond.

Soyer:

But did -- was there an election? Or... ?

Reuter:

Yeah. It was lost by the time we got involved. By the time... (laughter) the last of the Mohicans went, there was nothing to win anymore. Even though we had minor successes beating them and so on, but it was lost from the beginning. And I knew that. And so did a number of other people. We were successful at giving them a hard time, but nothing more than that. You know? Yep!

Soyer:

OK.

END OF FILE