According to an article written by Preston Tucker, six months before the ending of the war in Europe, Roosevelt had a meeting with the heads of the Big Three carmakers to discuss his post-war plans. Tucker claims that Roosevelt threatened anti-trust action against the automakers. Naturally, I’m curious if this meeting actually occured. Did Roosevelt have such a meeting? And did he imply that he was going to be seeking anti-trust actions against them?
Bumpity.
Where can I read the article that alleges this?
AFAIK, there’s no online source for it. It originally appeared in the December 1955 issue of Car Life magazine, but IIRC resold the piece (since he wrote it) to a couple of other publications.
I’ve never heard of this meeting, and detailed biographies of FDR don’t mention it. During the war, the auto companies were defense contractors turning out trucks and Jeeps for the Army; civilian auto production virtually ceased and competition wasn’t an issue. In addition, antitrust was never the major weapon in FDR’s economic arsenal. The NRA, a centerpiece of the early New Deal, practically encouraged cartelization of major industries under the theory that excessive competition was contributing to deflation. There were some antitrust cases brought under Roosevelt, but as I say, it was never a major focus.
Of course, I can’t prove a negative. It’s possible the meeting took place, and that FDR was looking ahead to postwar civilian reconversion and said, “If you do this, then I’ll do that.” But I have no evidence of this.
Well, had such a meeting taken place (and there were definately meetings at the start of the war with the leaders of industry), there’d be a record of it (not necessarily on the web, however). So it looks to me that Tucker may have been making it up or exaggerating things.
Still, it might be possible to throw a little weight in one direction or the other if there was some kind of “Post-War Plans” type document floating about.
Making that Novebmer of 44 right after the election? My WAG is that FDR who probably knew he wasn’t going to live very long and was focused almost completely on finishing the war, which he and Churchill estimated would go on at least through 46-47 at that point.
I cannot give you a definitive SDMB-GQ answer “No”. But given everything I have ever read on FDR’s end of life it seems very, very unlikely that he was throwing down with the Big three at that point over some theoretical point he (probably) knew he was never going to live to see.
[QUOTE=Tuckerfan]
So it looks to me that Tucker may have been making it up or exaggerating things.
QUOTE]
Not that he ever did that. :eek: :eek: :rolleyes:
You’re probably right. I need to check to see how much info there’s available online at the FDR library (if there is such a thing), since I’ve found some comments by Truman’s staff at his library indicating that the Truman Administration had a tough time dealing with various heads of industry economizing during the wartime as well as they should have. So it might be, that if this meeting did take place, FDR might have been saying it to put the fear of Og in them, in order to help bring the war to a rapid close.
What kind of “anti-trust action” did Tucker say that Roosevelt was threatening? What did he want them to do or not do? How exactly would he have justified it? (The Big Three had many more American competitors then than they do today.) I’d like to see a lot more information on what Tucker actually said.
Even so, I’m with the others. Jawboning industry was not FDR’s style. I can’t remember a similar instance concerning any other industry during the war. If he wanted industry to do things, he had any number of surrogates to do the actual talking. And there is very little evidence of any post-war plans he was initiating at that time.
Slight correction, the quote’s from a 1951 Issue of Cars magazine (my photocopy of the article doesn’t have the date of the issue). Anyway, here’s what the article says
Now, here’s an account by a former Truman official on the kinds of problems they had with some industries during the war (not I should point out, the automotive industry, I haven’t found anything on the site which discusses them yet)
(emphasis in the original)
Now prior to the war, a great number of automotive firms had gone under: Pierce Arrow, Franklin, Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg, and many others. All victims, in one way or another, of the Great Depression. Additionally, there’d been (IIRC) some consolidation in the industry as far as the Big Three buying up the suppliers for subcomponents (I believe that some of this happened before the war, but certainly a great deal of it happened after the war.), and there had been some rumblings about the threats to the smaller independants the Big Three had posed. (My sources for this are books on the history of Packard and Studebaker companies, not anything Tucker had said.) The government had entered into what many had felt was a flawed arrangement with industry during the war in order to keep prices down. I forget the exact details of the arrangement, and I don’t have time to dig through my references at the moment, but it limited the amount of profit a company could make to 15% above what they’d made just prior to the war’s start. There was a clause for companies which hadn’t made a profit before the war, but I don’t remember the details. This agreement, however, (and unintentionally, I’m sure) ensured that companies which were failing before the war, would not be on firm financial footing by war’s end.
Now, FDR was a fairly astute individual, and probably knew that these deals weren’t the best, but knowing that he had to win the war, probably figured that something could be done to correct this at war’s end. What that was, of course, I’ve no idea.
Yes, the government had problems with industries during the war. So what? That has absolutely nothing to do with any comments anybody might have made about industries after the war.
And there’s a factual problem with the Tucker article. The government did not build the Willow Run plant: Henry Ford did. Not only was it begun before the U.S. entered the war, it was finished before the U.S. entered the war. It started limited parts production in November 1941.
This Michigan History article doesn’t indicate any government help in the building of the plant, although there may have been some. Almost certainly, however, it was not a government plant that FDR could have given away after the war.
And it seems doubtful that the public would have approved.
I don’t see any evidence that the government built the Dodge-Chrysler aircraft engine plant in Chicago either. This mammoth plant, actually bigger than Willow Run, was built under government contract, but that’s not at all the same thing.
I call bullshit. I don’t think that the Tucker article is factually correct and I simply can’t believe that as astute a politician as Roosevelt would have said anything like this in the middle of a war. What would he have gained by it? Tucker had something to gain by a breakup of the Big Three, however. Consider the source.
People are petty, and some times plot revenge. So while FDR might have said it, his intention might solely have been to shake them up into complying better, with no serious intention of following through with it after the war. And the thought of companies trying to screw the government was so repulsive to most people that one of the leading crusaders against it during the war, a certain Missouri Senator by the name of Harry S. Truman, later wound up as FDR’s VP because of the popularity he gained by doing this. (And it should be noted that Truman pursued the bastards based on reasons of personal outrage, and not any desire for political gain.)
That’s not entirely correct. Here is an account from the Executive Vice-President and Director, Defense Plant Corporation, 1940-43 John W. Snyder about the Willow Run Plant
From the same source, the thought process which went into building the plants.
Remember, the US was just starting to come out of the Great Depression when it joined the war, so naturally people were concerned that after the war there was ample employment for folks.
But as you can see from the above quote, the idea was that the plant would be turned over to a civilian operation of some sort after the war. The original deal that Tucker had was he would be leased the plant (with the option purchase it later), the Feds later yanked that deal, and told Tucker that he’d only be granted a lease to the plant if he shared it with the Lustron Corporation. Tucker agreed, and Lustron moved into a portion of the plant, almost immediately, however, the Feds tried to push Tucker completely out of the plant. (The film is inaccurate in claiming Tucker lost control of the plant at the end of the trial. Tucker was booted from the plant the moment the Feds filed fraud charges against him.)
If I thought that Tucker’s comments could be accepted as gospel, I wouldn’t have posted the question. I’d like to know, however, what FDR really intended to do after the war. Obviously, there was some thought at the beginning of the war into swords into ploughs, but was it simply, “We’ll build the plants so that they can easily be converted into something else that we’ll figure out later on.” Or did they have specific aims as to the kinds of industries they planned to make those plants available to?
Shoot. I meant to get back to this earlier.
Good research. I checked into the building of the plants, but not into their later disposition. Another illustration of the maxim to never assume and never take anything for granted.
However, the interview with John Snyder itself supports the view that the administration did not have very specific goals in mind for plant reconversion, that the end of the war in Europe while the war continued in Japan threw it into turmoil, that there was considerable disagreement inside the administration about how to proceed, and that the free market was mostly allowed to make the conversation unhindered.
Who was supposed to be plotting revenge against whom?
Good cite, but it doesn’t seem to support Tucker’s contention in any way. Or Tucker, for that matter:
Just out of curiosity, are you aware of the streamlined car Norman Bel Geddes designed in his 1932 book Horizons, which included some details that Tucker would later use, like headlights that turned with the wheels?
IIRC, the film is accurate when Karatz says that the unions wanted the plant to go to an automaker. (My source for this is not Tucker related, so it should be accurate, assuming my memory isn’t playing tricks on me.)
True, but the car makers were given the greenlight to resume civilian production while we were still at war with Japan. For reasons too complicated to go into, the first cars didn’t roll off the assembly line until after Japan surrendered, but it was well known to everyone, including the Japanese, that the war was over long before Japan surrendered.
Well, perhaps revenge isn’t necessarily the right term. If FDR had had a lot of trouble out of the Big Three (and I don’t know enough of about their history during this time period to say for sure), he might have wanted to do it, in order to force them to play ball better. Let’s not forget that even FDR probably knew he wouldn’t survive the war at this point, and he no doubt wanted to make sure that there were no unexpected surprises between then and war’s end. In 1944 Eisenhower was aiming at victory by Christmas, which of course didn’t happen, but from what I gather, his pledge was rather well known (he even had a bet with Monty about it). So if FDR said something like that, it might have simply to get them to STFU, so he could get the war over with. (Og knows that in the newsreel of him and Truman eating breakfast, FDR looked like death eating a sandwich.)
Of course, Snyder is wrong when he states that Tucker only built three or four prototypes in the plant. I don’t have time to dig for an online site, but there’s photographs of the pilot assembly line in the plant, showing a large number of cars either complete or nearly complete, and it’s well documented that when everything was sold off at the sheriff’s auction that there were 50 complete cars (one of which was the rollover car), plus enough parts, including bodies to assemble several other cars. Unfortunately, only one more was assembled from those components (the others being used to keep the completed Tucker’s running or simply allowed to rot in a field in Indiana, IIRC). From my research, I’ve been able to ascertain that Truman had some idea of what all was going on with Tucker, but not the complete details, which isn’t really surprising, since Truman had a country to run, and Tucker was only a minor issue in the postwar reconstruction of the world.
Nope, but the idea dates before that. In the 1920s you could buy an after-market kit for your Packard which enabled you to mount a center light that would turn with the wheels. Tucker, it just so happens, was a Packard salesman at this time. (Tucker’s true genius, IMHO, was taking various ideas that had been out there for some time and combining them into one car.) So is the book any good? And is it still in print?
Horizons is a fascinating look at the far boundaries of design. It’s part day-after-tomorrow concept and part down-to-earth practical and part pure silliness (his concept airplane is an ocean liner in the air, with a crew of 135!). It’s an expensive collector’s item today, but my central library had a copy and I imagine any good library would also have one: it’s a classic. I happened to just read it so the car design stuck in my head. It was essentially a teardrop with fins, with eight seats in three rows and the engine situated so that there need be no hood, giving the driver excellent visibility. A less-boxy minivan, in some ways. It wasn’t just streamlined, but it was also low to the ground to prevent rollover, evidently a major problem at the time. Automobile deaths then were almost the same as today, but that meant they were at least 20 times higher per million miles driven.
A prototype was scheduled to be built just when the 1929 market crash hit and wiped out his backer.