Reel 28

Scope and Contents The Eleventh Annual STFU Convention was held in Little Rock on November 14 to 17; the papers include a "Program and Budget for the Year 1944" and a list of delegates and visitors, but no Proceedings or other report of what took place. There is a 13-page report by Leon Schachter entitled "The First Organized Migration of Union Labor" submitted to the Executive Board of the Meat Cutters Union (19). During the first week of the month, there is an exchange between Mitchell and the War Manpower...

Scope and Contents The papers are mainly routine through December, except for the campaign to obtain a pardon for Tee Davis (see November, 1943, above) which the reader may follow through the letters of lawyer K.T. Sutton and the WDL. There are a few additional items of special interest: Mitchell to AF of L President William Green, asking for help in organizing various rural industries in the South 914); two reports by David Burgess on his organizing trips through Arkansas (19, n.d. [December]); a report on...

Scope and Contents

Statement of H.L. Mitchell on "The 1944 Farm Labor Supply Bill"; Memorandum by Mitchell on "A Congressional Investigation of Abuses of Public Law 45"; Special STFU Newsletter to workers at the Campbell Soup Co.; Bulletin to organizers and locals about jobs available at the Campbell Co.; Memorandum by Mitchell on "Organization of dehydrated food plants and related industries in the South."

Scope and Contents As the year began, Mitchell wrote Leon Schachter that the STFU had no prospects for finding jobs for its members except in New Jersey (3). Despite his pessimism, Mitchell wrote the WMC about supplying workers for war plants in Louisville, Ky. (3); the Commission did not take up his offer, for reasons outlined in a WMC internal memorandum which appears in the papers (12). Two hopeful signs did begin to lift the gloom: Marvin W. Hook of the Meat Cutters Union wrote about sending men for...

Scope and Contents Mitchell and Schachter both became convinced that the prime obstacle facing their "organized migration" program was the opposition of local WMC officials in Memphis, New Jersey, and other places. There is a great deal of correspondence during February on this problem, especially between Mitchell and Schachter, between Mitchell and Paul Sifton of the National Farmers' Union (8, 13); and between the STFU and the WMC. STFU Vice-Presidents F.R. Betton and J.E. Clayton wrote to the Heifers for...