Reel 24

Scope and Contents The fight against the Cannon Bill may best be followed in Mitchell's letters to Norman Thomas (2) and J.G. Luhrsen, Executive Secretary of the Railway Labor Executives' Association (9), as well as in his lengthy reports to the GEC on his lobbying efforts in Washington (15,22). Various unions and liberal organizations wrote toward the beginning of the month, giving their positions on the bill. After the bill passed the Senate, Mitchell and Norman Thomas sent communications to the President...

Scope and Contents Chester A. Davis, War Food Administrator, spelled out the government's new policy on transporting agricultural labor in a letter to Mitchell (21). Mitchell explained the STFU viewpoint in a six-page memorandum to various officials in Washington entitled, "Factors in the Farm Labor Crisis" (15; note: this is an approximate date). See also his statement before the House Committee Investigating the Farm Security Administration (27). Toward the end of the month, there is a correspondence about...

Scope and Contents Efforts to send workers to Seabrook Farms continued, but only a handful of union members actually went. There are two reports from STFU members in New Jersey (22,24) and a letter from Hayes Beall, informing Mitchell that the company chose to employ Jamaican workers instead of southern ones (26). Lester Granger, Executive Secretary of the National Urban League, wrote about his recent conversation with one of President Roosevelt's "closest advisors" concerning the new farm labor legislation...

Scope and Contents There is a flurry of correspondence beginning on June 29 and continuing throughout the summer of the use of prisoners of war by planters to depress farm wages in the South; major figures involved include Frank Fenton Organization Director of the AF of L, Marvin Jones, the new War Food Administrator, and Clinton S. Golden, Vice-Chairman of the WMC. The union also discovered that county agents were interpreting the new labor laws to mean that farm workers could not leave a state without...

Scope and Contents Dissension developed among the staff members of the Spruce Pine Co-operative store, and Mitchell and STFU President Roy E. Raley attempted to straighten things out. The first STFU local in New Mexico, located at Las Cruces, began to become active. The reader may follow the progress of the Las Cruces local through the correspondence of organizer G.W. Holsome. See especially Mitchell to Holsome, proposing that the union buy some surplus land near Las Cruces for the purpose of colonizing black...