Nelson, Gorden, 1911-1998

              DATE: APRIL 7, 1980
INTERVIEWER: KENNETH B. WEST
INTERVIEWEE: GORDEN NELSON
WEST: You worked in Plant 5 then.
NELSON: Yeah.
WEST: What plant was that? What did they do in that plant?
NELSON: In Plant 5?
WEST: Yes.
NELSON: Well, that was the cams and the valves and the case department. And the heat-treat was in the back, and that's where I worked.
WEST: I see. You worked on heat treatment, then.
NELSON: Well, we made valves. They called it the heat-treat. It was hotter than Sam Hill and dirty back there. Maybe that's why they called it the heat-treat.
WEST: When did you hire into Chevy 5?
NELSON: I hired in in 1930.
WEST: 1930.
NELSON: I worked in Plant 4 in the motor line when I started.
WEST: In 1930.
NELSON: Yeah, and then I transferred over there. I had a chance to go over in five in the valve forge 'cause they were workin' two shifts. They had to work two shifts on account of the furnaces in there. They couldn't shut 'em down, see.
WEST: I see.
NELSON: And on the motor line we was workin' eight hours a day. Well, I no sooner transferred over there to Plant 5 in the heat treat and the NRA come in. And you only could work a man so many hours a day. So they put on three seven-and-a-half-hour shifts. And I got less time there than I did over in Plant 4.
WEST: Oh my. You hired in in 1930 then. Where were you born, sir?
NELSON: I was born in Frankfort, Michigan.
WEST: In Frankfort. What year was that?
NELSON: 1911.
WEST: 1911. So you hired in just at nineteen. You were just out of high school then.
NELSON: Yeah, I had to have my workin' papers when I hired in there.
WEST: When did you come to Flint in the first place?
NELSON: Well, we came to Flint in 1920. See, I worked in the shop. I went to work in the shop when I was seventeen in the heat-treat. And I worked there about three months. And I says, "Hell, this is no place for me down here." The guys were eatin' their lunch sittin' next to their machine and all this and that. So I quit. Well, then I got married and I had to go to work.
WEST: I see.
NELSON: And then I went into Plant 4.
WEST: What did your father do?
NELSON: My father was a fisherman in Frankfort.
WEST: A fisherman in Frankfort.
NELSON: Yeah, and then of course we went from Frankfort to Gloucester, Massachusetts. And we were there for a couple of years. He was in the fishing business there. And then he came to Flint and he went to work at the Buick. And he retired from the Buick.
WEST: Did he come to Flint because he had heard of jobs then in the auto industry?
NELSON: Well, he came here to go to work, yeah, because they had a fisherman's strike in Gloucester at the time, and there was nobody workin'.
WEST: Fisherman's strike. Did they have a union?
NELSON: They must have had; they must have had.
WEST: I'm just interested in that, to know whether there was unionism in the family then.
NELSON: My dad never talked about it or anything, but they had a strike and they were on strike for quite a while.
WEST: They must have been organized then. NELSON: Yeah.
WEST: Cod fishing then?
NELSON: Pardon me?
WEST: Cod fishing?
NELSON: No, no, they'd fish in the ocean. They had haddock, codfish, and they had schooners. And they would go out maybe for a week. And then they'd come in and they'd sell their fish. The fish buyers would be right there. And they would split it amongst the crew.
That's how they made their money. And they made awful good money when they worked.
WEST: Oh, yes. So you came to Flint then and worked in the plants in 1930. Those were depression years, of course.
NELSON: Oh, yes.
WEST: Did you maintain a job pretty steadily through the depression?
NELSON: Well, I went to work in the shop in 1930 when I was laid off in ‘31, in May. And I was off for up until in the fall. And I went back in ‘31. And then I worked all of the time, steady, all the way through. Of course they didn't have the union in them days. Now the union, it don't make no difference what it is. It's got its good points and bad points. And I was a good worker and anybody that was a good worker, as a rule, they tried to hang onto you. But with the seniority like they have today, I mean the working part, that really don't make that much difference. At least it didn't the last I worked in there, although it was rougher than the dickens. You know sixteen-seventeen dollars a week was maybe all that you'd take home. The fellow on the welfare, he was a hell of a lot better than the fellow who worked in the shop.
WEST: Were you working piecework, then, on that job?
NELSON: No, no, we didn't work piecework yet. I worked on the line hangin' flywheels when I worked there.
WEST: That was in Chevy 4?
NELSON: In Plant 4, yeah.
WEST: And then you transferred into Plant 5. Was the work any rougher in 5 than it was in 4 or were they comparable, can you say?
NELSON: No, we didn't have bad conditions as far as the work was concerned, because if we worked a couple of hours (we were supposed to get thirty-eight hundred valves in eight hours).
. . We had a fireman and a press operator. Of course, if you could get onto a job you could knock out a few more than that, see. And every two hours we would change off. The furnace would change to press and I would change to furnace. But we'd pull the fire out. And if we had fifteen, twenty minutes production ahead we managed to eliminate that. We'd take a little break, see. And then sometimes we didn't take no break. If things got rough and the dies pulled out, you know, you would have hard times sometimes. Why, we worked all day. But I know one thing. We had a foreman down there. His name was Ed Grenmark; he's dead now. And we had a fellow down there that liked to do a little more on his production and he had thirty-eight fifty on his press one night. Every time I would come down...there was a counter, see, and you could tell. And he went around and got him and took him around there and said, "See that counter?" This was...he had an hour yet to go almost before quittin' time. He said, "I want thirty-eight hundred valves on there, not thirty-eight fifty or thirty-nine. I want them on 'em every day. I don't want no more and I don't want no less and don't forget it."
WEST: That was the foreman?
NELSON: The foreman. Because you see...
WEST: The way I'm used to thinking of it, the foreman was wanting all the production he could get.
NELSON: Well, you see, the general foreman would come down there and see that on there or mainly the superintendent would come down. If thirty-eight hundred is production for eight hours and here is a guy that's got thirty-eight fifty in seven hours, hey, these guys can get more than this here! And he'd start raisin' the devil, see, 'cause in them days, as I understand it, most good guys, foremens, they'd like to keep it down, because they got along better that way, too.
WEST: Oh, I see.
NELSON: But if supervision, the higher supervision, saw that, they'd begin to think that thirty- eight fifty or thirty-nine hundred was a normal production. Yeah, they could do more, see, and they could get more. Of course you hear a lot of stories, but I don't know.
WEST: Did any of the men get on these pushers, these guys who would try to do more?
NELSON: Well, they never appreciated it any. See, there was a lot of Mexicans down there where I worked, about half Mexicans.
WEST: Really, is that right?
NELSON: Yeah, it was so hot, see. And they were good fellows. They done their work and they were good union people. They were good union people.
WEST: That's interesting, because there couldn't have been, in those days, that many Mexican- Americans in here. Were they Mexican-Americans who had lived here a long while?
NELSON: Well, this you don't know. Back in them days I think some of 'em had come over here and they didn't have papers, see. You don't know, see, because sometimes they'd be there a year or so and they'd disappear. You'd never know what happened to them. Maybe they'd get after 'em or somethin' and they'd go back. I don't know.
WEST: Oh, they weren't there then for a long time?
NELSON: Some of 'em weren't, but the majority of them were there. See, I left there in ‘42. That's when the war started.
WEST: I see. Now did these Mexicans speak Spanish then on the job?
NELSON: Oh, they spoke American.
WEST: They spoke English.
NELSON: They spoke American amongst themselves and they talked a little Mexican or Spanish.
WEST: Sure, right. That's interesting. So the job was very hot, then.
NELSON: It was hot.
WEST: Did you have any ventilation in there?
NELSON: Oh, yes. They had a big pipe come down like this. This was a press and this would be your furnace. And they had a big pipe come down with an elbow here and an elbow here with air blowin'; and you could regulate that. Otherwise you couldn't stand it.
WEST: I see. Could you get relief, get breaks?
NELSON: Well, there we took our own, anytime we wanted to go we went. We knew what we had to get and we would get it, see.
WEST: I see. So your relationship then on the job with your foreman was pretty good.
NELSON: Oh yeah, he was a good man to work for. And even over in Plant 4...of course the relief man over there... You know, any job that you start new, the first you work like the devil on it, because you don't know what you're doin', see.
WEST: Right, right.
NELSON: And the relief man, you could never find him. He was down shooting baloney with somebody someplace. But you got so you had learned your job and you could work up the line. And this was back there in ’30-‘31. You could work up your job, work up the line and still run up and come back if you wanted to go.
WEST: I see.
NELSON: You had to.
WEST: Were conditions then in Plant 5, on the whole, that way pretty easy or was it just your department that was easy?
NELSON: Well, I never knew of anybody gettin' shafted down there.
WEST: The reason I raised that question is that I've talked to two-three people recently from Plant 4 and they commented on the speed-up, you know, the hectic pace there, and that they weren't able to keep up.
NELSON: Well, this may have taken place after I left there, see. But when I was there, and I worked there for about a year on the motor line. And before I left I worked on any job from my wheel job down. If anybody wasn't there, I worked there. And I never found any of them jobs that hard, that was then.
WEST: Now you were a younger man. Did some of the older men find it difficult to keep up?
NELSON: No, I've never talked to any of them that were. Of course, then I was twenty-six and most all of the fellows I talked to down there or associated with, they were all pretty much the same age as I was. They were young, young fellows.
WEST: About how many people would you get closely acquainted with on the job that you would know by first name basis?
NELSON: Well when I worked in the valve forge I knew them all.
WEST: How many would that be then?
NELSON: Oh we had fourteen, twenty-eight, maybe forty-five.
WEST: Oh, you knew that many men. Was there a lot of turnover then among those guys?
NELSON: No, no there really wasn't a lot of turnover. The reason I spoke about the Mexicans is you would notice them more so than you would someone else leavin', see. And I got to know quite a few of them pretty well. They all liked to drink, you know. And if you ever met one of 'em someplace... (laughs)
WEST: You had the beer gardens then, didn't you, close by the plants?
NELSON: Oh yes.
WEST: Did you have a chance to talk much on the job?
NELSON: No, you couldn't. It was so darn noisy in there.
WEST: I see.
NELSON: You would stand at your press workin' sometime and you'd be whistlin', you know, like you will sometime or singin' and you couldn't hear yourself. You would wonder if you're losing your voice and you would go over to get a drink of water to see if you could talk or not. It was really noisy, see. There were three hundred ton presses and when one of them...
WEST: Was it dangerous?
NELSON: No, you used tongs, long aluminum tongs and you worked with the tongs. And you wasn't supposed to put your hand underneath because once in a while a clutch would slip and they would drop so fast you couldn't see it.
WEST: Did you operate those presses with buttons then or with foot pedals?
NELSON: No your feet, your foot pedals. They didn't have the buttons then. They had a couple of hydraulics in there that you were supposed to put your hands up on 'em. But they never used that.
WEST: I was thinking that it might be dangerous with the feet because you could operate with the feet and get your hands in there.
NELSON: Well, you always tripped. You got used to your machine and you knew what it would do. And you was the one that made it come down; nothin' else come down. If you didn't step on the pedal it didn't come down. And it didn't drop right away; it didn't come right away. It was slow.
WEST: I see. Did you eat lunch at your work or did you take it...?
NELSON: Oh, yes.
WEST: You did, you ate lunch there. Was it still noisy when you were eating lunch or did they shut it down?
NELSON: No everything...all the presses was down.
WEST: Down, so you could talk then.
NELSON: Oh yeah, but when they were going it was somethin' else.
WEST: Did you talk union at all while you were eating lunch?
NELSON: Well, afterwards, after the strike and that. You didn't talk much about it before, because the boss, he was still the company man, you know. WEST: Right, right so you were careful about who you talked to.
NELSON: That's right, you had to be.
WEST: Did you feel that there were company stoolies, you might call them?
NELSON: Well, they had the vigilantes after the sit-down strike is what we called 'em.
WEST: Oh, yes.
NELSON: And there was even some fellas that belonged to the union that was on that. After the big strike why they had them fellows hanging around after the end of every shift. They were afraid they'd pull off another strike. And of course, they were supposed to avert it. But we never had no trouble.
WEST: I see.
NELSON: We had three or four work stoppages after that but we never had any trouble.
WEST: I wanted to get into that, but I'm thinking of the period before the strike when the union came to Flint and began to organize, say in '35 and '36. Were there some men in Chevy 5 that you would have to be careful to talk to because they might be company men?
NELSON: Well, we only had one in my department that belonged to the union. And the boss told me, he said, "When you go over and talk to him, be careful that there is not somebody else around, see, because he belongs to the union."
WEST: Oh, so they knew who he was and the foreman warned you not to talk to him. Why? Because they felt that somebody might see you talking with him and then figure you were union too?
NELSON: Of course, naturally they didn't want the union to be in there and they didn't know what he was talkin' about. And this man made it obvious. He even wore his union button.
WEST: Really, but they didn't fire him?
NELSON: Oh no, no.
WEST: Why? Because I had heard from some people that you could get fired if the management knew that you were union.
NELSON: Well, I suppose each plant operates different and it depends a lot upon who it is.
WEST: And you have indicated already that your foreman was a little more sympathetic.
NELSON: He was. Well, the same way, in Plant 5 we had a superintendent whose name was Sid Smith. He was a real nice fellow. Now they had, over in Plant 4, in the dining room there was a superintendent over there that the union had a song, "We'll Hang So-and-So to the Sour Apple Tree." Well, they sang that over in Plant 4 about one superintendent and, by gosh, they had a little wildcat strike over that, 'cause he was really gonna raise hell with 'em. Well, over in Plant 5, in the dining room, Sid Smith was the superintendent, and they sang, "We'll Hang Old Sid Smith to the Sour Apple Tree." And old Sid Smith got right up on the dining room table and led 'em in the song. Now that's the kind of guy he was, see. Well, you know, with somebody like that, you got a little harmony with.
WEST: Talking about management people, did you know of Arnold Lenz at all? He was apparently pretty high up in supervision.
NELSON: Lenz, Arnold, oh yeah.
WEST: He was of German background and I've heard he had a German accent.
NELSON: Yes.
WEST: What sort of a fellow was he?
NELSON: Well, I never had too much connection with him. I don't know; I really don't know. I know he used to have a farm over here on Fenton Road.
WEST: Right.
NELSON: And I don't know...I never heard anything that he was rough. I mean I really couldn't say.
WEST: In these years before the strike, or in the couple of years before the strike, were you approached about joining the union then?
NELSON: Well, let's say like this. In 1934 I joined the union and it was A F of L.
WEST: Oh, I see.
NELSON: And that was when Homer Martin was there.
WEST: Right.
NELSON: Of course, you know how that went. It didn't go no place.
WEST: I know. There was a threat of a strike and then it was averted by the A F of L organizer and some of the men feel that they were sold out. They were all set to strike and then it was averted and they never did get anything.
NELSON: And then they had...the shop after that had what they called the "Works Council".
WEST: Oh yes, the Works Council. Now, did you keep your membership up in the A F of L after ‘34?
NELSON: No.
WEST: You dropped out?
NELSON: I did.
WEST: Did you get involved in the Works Council then at all?
NELSON: No, no, I didn't get involved in the Works Council, but I know what went on. I mean, it was very obvious what went on.
WEST: What was that, could you explain that?
NELSON: Well, you couldn't say nothin' about production, because the Works Council had went in, and they was supposed to be voted by the men on the job. And they were supposed to be your representatives. And if they thought the line was going too fast or this was going too fast, why, they went in there and talked to them about it. But they told them to get back out there and find somethin' else to find fault about. But we will run the plant and run the production.
WEST: I see.
NELSON: And it didn't work.
WEST: Did they do anything for you?
NELSON: Not that I know of.
WEST: They couldn't talk wages or anything like that?
NELSON: No, no. Safety grievances, if there was grease on the floor or somethin' like this. It really didn't amount to heck of a lot.
WEST: Did you know men working with you who were on the Works Council? Were they elected by the men?
NELSON: They were elected by the men, yeah. They would do it right in the shop, you know. Of course it didn't amount to a heck of a lot.
WEST: Was pressure put on you by the company to get involved in the Works Council?
NELSON: No, no. WEST: Now the CIO, as I understand it, comes in to Flint in the spring and the summer of 1936 or so, a few months before the strike. Bob Travis comes in to organize. Wyndham Mortimer was in town. Did you know any of those?
NELSON: Oh yeah, I knew Bob Travis. I mean I talked to him, but I never knew him personal, nor Mortimer.
WEST: What impression did you form of those men?
NELSON: Well, I thought they were pretty damn good fellows myself. I really did; I really did.
WEST: Now the strike itself was called. Did you have any premonition that a strike was coming at Fisher at all? Was there any talk in the shop, you know, about how it was going to be done?
NELSON: No, when Fisher started, little Fisher, I think they went on a strike late in the fall or in the winter time, I believe.
WEST: It was just before New Year’s, just before New Year’s, I think, very late in ‘36. They went down, I think, and then Fisher 1 on South Saginaw, the big plant went down just hours later.
NELSON: Quite a bit of time afterwards.
WEST: You had no idea that they were going to...
NELSON: No, we didn't know anything about that down there.
WEST: Now Fisher 2, how close was the Fisher 2 plant to your plant, Chevy 5?
NELSON: Well, Fisher 2, that's South Fisher, isn't it?
WEST: No, Fisher 1, I think, is South Fisher. Fisher 2 was the small plant.
NELSON: Well, there was just the river between the little Fisher (we called it "Little Fisher") and Plant 5.
WEST: Did you see any action around Fisher 2, then, when you were goin' to work?
NELSON: No, well, not from there, but we walked past there. Oh yeah, we seen it; they were on strike up there.
WEST: You saw them then?
NELSON: Oh yeah, we saw 'em at the windows up there.
WEST: You were not a member of the union.
NELSON: Not at that time.
WEST: What did you think of the strike when it broke out there? Were you in sympathy with the men there, or were you sort of neutral?
NELSON: Well, I could understand why they wanted the strike and why they wanted the union. You see, they worked on piecework, but we in production we worked on what they called the bonus system. If the efficiency went at a hundred and fifty (I believe that it was a hundred and fifty), you got fifty cents on the dollar of your regular day rate. But about two or three days before payday, the pay went in, and that always dropped, see.
WEST: Were you working on that system?
NELSON: We were working on that system in Plant 4 and also in Plant 5.
WEST: At Plant 5. Did you notice the drop too?
NELSON: Well, not so much in Plant 5 as in Plant 4 'cause they posted it in Plant 4. There was a board where they put the efficiency on.
WEST: I see.
NELSON: And of course the motor line, that was always a poor place to work because you might do your work right but the piston department... See everything come into the motor line, and if they goofed up over there and we put it together, why, it went off of us as well as them, see.
WEST: I see.
NELSON: In other words, if somethin' happened, why the men was the guy that paid for it.
WEST: Right, right. Now did you or any people in Plant 5 ever give assistance, you know, in the way of picket duty or relieving the men in Fisher 2 when they were on strike?
NELSON: Well, yes. Like I say, I joined the second of February. Well I joined it the day of the sit-down strike. I didn't know that Plant 4 was gonna go down that day when I joined it. But we couldn't get involved in it 'cause they had our doors...as soon as Plant 4 went down they had Plant 5...the gates were all guarded. You couldn't get out to go over and help if you wanted to, see. We didn't know that at the time, but we found it out. Of course that night when we finished our work there was no more work. But I was on strike duty for all the time the strike started, the sit-down strike, until it was settled.
WEST: I see.
NELSON: And there was a lot of fellows in there that were.
WEST: You went over to Fisher...was it Chevy 4 that you relieved or Fisher 2?
NELSON: No, we wouldn't relieve them. Now, like the Pengelly Building downtown, that was headquarters.
WEST: Right.
NELSON: And they were always afraid. The city had a lot of threats from different groups that they were gonna take it over and drive 'em out of town and all this and that, see. So we were on strike duty down there. We watched that place. In other words, we were in there and nobody come in.
WEST: You were guarding the Pengelly Building.
NELSON: That's right, the Pengelly Building. And nobody come in there unless they had a union card, see. And of course, upstairs they had music. It was a sort of a dance hall up there, a hall is what it was. And they always had music up there to try to keep the fellows around enough so that there would be people around. I stayed there for three or four days. And then also they had the kitchen out to south Fisher, where they prepared the food for the sit-down strikers.
WEST: Yes.
NELSON: And we were on strike duty out there. WEST: Guarding that place.
NELSON: That's right. And one night in particular out there, I was sitting in there with two other fellows. We had our cars parked across the street and some car pulled up and somethin' went through the air and the light in the car went all in flames.
WEST: Now I'll have to tell you, Mr. Nelson, I was in Washington, D.C. and I was going through the papers of the La Follette Committee. They were investigating anti-union activities and violations of civil rights. And I think I saw your affidavit there.
NELSON: Yeah, I made one up.
WEST: Testifying, you made one out and I saw it in Washington. NELSON: But there was never nothing done.
WEST: Nothing was done about that. NELSON: No, no.
WEST: Did they talk to you? How did they get in contact with you, or how did you...?
NELSON: Well, they knew I was out in the kitchen. See, we had a strike card and they knew who was on strike duty and who wasn't, see. And I also had a meal ticket.
WEST: The La Follette people or the union?
NELSON: To the union, see. And they knew who was out there. And I don't mind sayin', I can't eat bologna yet, because we had so damn many bologna sandwiches on dry bread and just put mustard on it to moisten it up a little bit. And that's what we ate, which was all right. Heck, it was good, at that. But I made that affidavit out down there.
WEST: How did the La Follette Committee get in touch with you, or did you just write it out?
NELSON: That was at that time, it was just a day or two after that, because the sheriff...they had it stated in the paper that we had set fire to the car ourselves.
WEST: I see.
NELSON: And that was not true. And I went down to the Dryden Building down on Second and Saginaw Street to some attorney or someplace up there and made this affidavit out, see.
WEST: Was that attorney Michael Evanoff by any chance, do you know? NELSON: Lord, I wouldn't remember. I wouldn't remember.
WEST: But you made it out. Did you meet anybody from the La Follette Committee that was in town at all?
NELSON: No, not after that.
WEST: And no one got in contact with you to follow this up? NELSON: No.
WEST: I noticed it in the papers.
NELSON: And I heard in a roundabout way, I think Wolcott was the sheriff at that time when they had the Battle of Bulls Run. I wasn't in it, because I didn't belong to the union at the time. I never knew it was happening. But anyway, they quieted the sheriff up, because they said that they had pictures of him standin' down underneath the bridge during the Battle of Bulls Run.
He was afraid to get out there because I guess they really went after him.
WEST: Any other incidents when you were guarding the cafeteria or the Pengelly Building? NELSON: No.
WEST: Did anyone try to get in who shouldn't have been in there? NELSON: No, no. We never had any problem that way.
WEST: Did you carry any clubs or anything like that? NELSON: No.
WEST: How many men were with you then guarding that place? Were there quite a few?
NELSON: I think there was four of us, was all that was out there, 'cause you know, like anything else, you know, you try to get somebody to do somethin'. You know, if you belong to a sportsmen's club or somethin', there's only a few that'll do all the work, you know, and it was the same way there. Them fellows, they wouldn't get out and go on strike duty or picket duty.
WEST: I see. Now I wonder if you could describe what happened in Plant 5 on the afternoon and the evening of the take over at Chevy four. Did you hear the noise outside then?
NELSON: No, no.
WEST: Were you on duty first of all on the shift at the time?
NELSON: No, we never knew anything was gonna happen. We never heard nothin' over there because there was a street between, see. No we didn't know anything was takin' place until oh, maybe after we worked about a half or three quarters of a day. I was workin' nights, see. Then we knew what had happened.
WEST: So that would have been what time then, about?
NELSON: Oh, we went to work at three in the afternoon and it was about seven at night, seven, eight o'clock.
WEST: What did you hear then? Did supervision come around?
NELSON: No, we just had it rumored. It was just from one to another and we heard it. No, we never had any trouble with the supervision over there.
WEST: But did anybody try to get you prepared for a takeover by the union? Was there any fear that the union might come in and try to take over Chevy 5? I'm thinking from the supervisor's viewpoint.
NELSON: Well, that was the reason, now that you're asking me that. They had cases piled up at the entrance so that nobody could get into Plant 5 after they took it over.
WEST: I see.
NELSON: You see, I don't know if you've heard it or not, but 6, 8, and 10 is sheet metal. That's in back of Plant 4. And they only had about ten percent at that time take Plant 4.
WEST: Of the men that were there at the time.
NELSON: And they came from 6, 8, and 10. And they gathered right there at 4. They all come together. It was well planned. Roy Reuther planned it, and he was a great fellow.
WEST: Right, and they had a diversion then at Plant 9.
NELSON: Yeah, and then they all came in and then they took Plant 4. Of course, they had a little outside help too, which I found out later.
WEST: Nobody, then, from Plant 5 went over to Plant 4, loyal to the company, then, to try to...
NELSON: No, you couldn't. No, no, not that I know of.
WEST: The reason that I asked that is that I talked to somebody, just the other day, late last week, who was in Chevy 4, who claimed that some guys loyal to the company tried to get into Plant 4 and that they repelled them. They had a bit of a fracas there and that was in the entrance
in Plant 4 from a tunnel that went from Plant 5 to 4. Apparently a conveyor went through. Would it be possible for men to get through that tunnel where they were conveying the motors?
NELSON: I wouldn't be a bit surprised that there was, because they'd have to have it big enough in case a case or somethin' fell off the conveyor, so they could get in and take it out. It would be possible.
WEST: So men could get through. Well, he claimed that there were some men, but you weren't aware of anybody trying to go through.
NELSON: I never heard that. Now I knew Marvin Keel; he's dead now. He was an inspector and he was right there at the head of that where that tunnel goes through. And I knew him quite well and he never mentioned anything about it. And then Tiny Herod was a committeeman there in Plant 5. He was a big Southern boy from down below, and he was a good guy. He was radical, but this is the way it has to go sometimes. But he was a good fellow. But I have never heard of that.
WEST: You never heard of that. You would have been in a position to perhaps know about or hear about it anyway.
NELSON: Well, you get some of these stories and you are not always certain about how much credence you can put to it because it's been so long ago.
WEST: At any rate, you were shut down then. Plant 5 was shut down after the takeover of 4. So you had plenty of time to take part in union work. You joined the next day. What prompted you, then, to join?
NELSON: Well, I had a neighbor then where I lived in Flint on Baltimore Boulevard, and he belonged to the union. He was a steward from Plant 4 or sheet metal. He was a steward anyway. And he asked me to join and I said, "Why not?" I joined the union before. I believed in it, you know.
WEST: Right. So you went to the Pengelly Building then, did you, to join?
NELSON: No, he signed me up.
WEST: He signed you up, I see. Were there many in Plant 5 that joined, signed up, after the takeover in 4?
NELSON: Oh, yes. We had a lot of fellows in there. Plant 5, as a whole, I would say, was, shoot, three quarters.
WEST: Really?
NELSON: And I believe it would be on a record that we had the first one-hundred-percent department, the heat treat, in the whole Chevrolet.
WEST: Now did most of those men join after the takeover of Plant 4? NELSON: That's right, that's right. No trouble at all.
WEST: That was quite a few. Were they just in sympathy with the men in 4, then?
NELSON: Hell, well, they believe in unionism. I mean they believed if they could get a little more money per hour, well, what the Sam Hill? This is what the score is all about, you know.
WEST: Right. That's good, you know. It was hot, but your relations with the foreman was pretty good and there wasn't great speed-up. What then were the reasons, do you think, that would prompt men like you and in your department to join the union?
NELSON: Well, I don't think...I never heard anybody in my department gripe about doin' too much work. It was...well, benefits and gettin' more money per hour. That was the main thing, because, man, when we get laid off over there, we didn't have unemployment like they got today. Hey, if you had five dollars in your pocket and you was off for three or four weeks, you felt like you had somethin'. Well, of course you know the union. They predicted, I think, that we was supposed to get one dollar an hour. I was getting forty-eight cents an hour and a lot of different things. I mean this was what most of the fellows where I was at was interested in.
WEST: So it was more the money.
NELSON: It was more the money than anything else. Now I worked after the war. I came back from Lansing and I worked in Plant 9, where I heard different ones say (the employment office used to be across the street from 9, then it was down at the end) where they would take a man over to the window and show him all of the people that were out of work and tell the man, "You either do this or he is gonna get your job." When I worked there after the war in Plant 9 in the bearings, I never seen anything that rough over there, ‘cause, you know, I don't care who it is, there's always somebody that don't want to do nothin'. Now I don't mean that this is the only kind of a fellow that ever joined the union or anything like that. But I think the union was wonderful.
WEST: There would be some slackers, though.
NELSON: Oh sure, it don't make no difference what it is.
WEST: Now in the period before the takeover at Chevy 4, there had been a strike at Fisher 2 for a while. They had been down for about a month or so, I think, before the takeover at Chevy 4.
Were there petitions circulated through the plant in Chevy 5, loyalty petitions, you know, saying that we are loyal to the company and...?
NELSON: If there were, I never saw one of them.
WEST: You never saw one.
NELSON: No. WEST: Because there were quite a number. And again on my trip to Washington I saw some of these petitions, and some people saying that they had been coerced into signing. The foremen would bring them around.
NELSON: I never saw that.
WEST: Was there any talk by the foreman or by supervision in that month about the union, how you shouldn't join?
NELSON: No, no, not our foreman. I never heard it. And I never had anybody tell me that they were tried to be influenced one way or the other.
WEST: Were you married at the time of the strike?
NELSON: Yes.
WEST: You were. How long had you been married then?
NELSON: Oh, I got married in 1930.
WEST: I see. Did you have any children?
NELSON: No, not during the strike.
WEST: Where were you living then?
NELSON: I lived on Baltimore Boulevard in Flint.
WEST: Baltimore Boulevard.
NELSON: That's when the strike started. No wait a minute, you say if I had children or not. Yeah, I had two.
WEST: But they wouldn't have been of school age.
NELSON: No.
WEST: The reason I asked is I wondered how things were with your family then during the strike. You didn't have an income presumably for those few days. Did you have any problems?
NELSON: No, I didn't have no problems. Well, it was the same way when you got laid off for a month or a month and a half. He always carried you, you know. And then it took you maybe eight months to get caught up. But, no, we didn't have no problem then.
WEST: You had no problem making payments then. NELSON: No.
WEST: Did you have a car at the time?
NELSON: Yeah, it wasn't much of a car, but I had one.
WEST: Was it a GM car?
NELSON: Oh yeah, a Chevy.
WEST: The reason I ask is that I've run into some people again who say that...I think more in the twenties actually than in the thirties... that the company sometimes encouraged people to own GM cars. If they found out that you weren't driving a GM car, they would push you.
NELSON: No, they never bothered me that way. Of course what I had was an old used clunker, you know.
WEST: But you had a car anyway. Did you have a telephone or a radio?
NELSON: No, I had a radio but I didn't have a telephone.
WEST: No telephone. Were you reading the Flint Journal then? NELSON: Yeah.
WEST: Anything else?
NELSON: The papers, you mean? WEST: Yeah, newspapers.
NELSON: No, the Flint Journal was the only one that we took. WEST: And their account of the strike and of that was in there. NELSON: I don't take it anymore, but I did then.
WEST: I see, I see. I was wondering, then, after the strike, did conditions change much in the plant? The strike is over about February eleventh and you got a small, short contract anyway. When you went back to work did you notice any changes?
NELSON: No, not particular. We shut down a couple times back there in sympathy with somebody else. But they never come back there and raised no heck with us.
WEST: Do you remember those occasions when you did sit down in sympathy with others? Do you know what the grievance was that prompted the walkout?
NELSON: Well, of course, after the union got the contract and the grievances started, you know, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink. And a lot of that supervision didn't want to bend to that, you know, askin' a man on the job or listenin' to what a man had to say on the job. And it was cases like that, grievances, that just caused them to get hepped up and they would shut her down.
WEST: Right. Now you had the steward system. Did that orginate after the strike, then?
NELSON: That did, but they didn't recognize that too long after that. See, the steward could go in and bargain with the superintendent and they didn't like that. They got the committeeman deal, see. But the steward's job was collecting dues and trying to keep the men informed about what was going on. In other words, you was a reporter to the men of what was going on.
WEST: Right. Would you take up grievances, then, that the men might have with the foremen?
NELSON: That's right. As a rule, a lot of men wouldn't take a grievance up. They may have a grievance and they wouldn't take it up. And so the only way that I could do is get it involved and make a group grievance out of it. And if it was a group grievance, then I could call a committeeman, 'cause a man wouldn't call him himself. But if you could get somebody else that had the same kind of grievance or problem, then it would be a group grievance, and then I could call a committeeman. Otherwise if the man had it himself and he didn't have or didn't want to or if he was afraid to call a committeeman, why, he would just have to absorb it. That's all, see.
WEST: I see. Now how many men did you represent then, as a steward?
NELSON: Well there was about forty of us.
WEST: I see. You got to know those men pretty well, then?
NELSON: Oh, yeah, I knew them all by their first names. Knew them all well.
WEST: Did you take up complaints? Do you remember many complaints?
NELSON: Pardon?
WEST: Did take up many complaints with the foreman then, in these group grievances as you call them. Were there many of those that came along?
NELSON: No, no. We didn't take it with the foreman. We had to call a committeeman. I'd call, but the foreman would get the committeeman. How did that work? The foreman he didn't settle the grievance.
WEST: I see, but you didn't have too many of those.
NELSON: No, no, not at all.
WEST: Did you have any trouble collecting dues from the men?
NELSON: No, no, them boys really paid.
WEST: You say that steward system didn't last very long.
NELSON: No, they didn't want to recognize it, because there was too many of 'em around, see. Now, like Plant 5, they had...for the amount of people that worked in Plant 5, there was, I don't know, hundreds of fellows worked in there. And the stewards, they could have two stewards in their department. Well, they had too many guys to bargain with. The committeemen, they would have two for Plant 5, where if they had the steward system, they might have fifteen.
WEST: I see. So the company then, management preferred the committee system.
NELSON: That's right.
WEST: Was the committee system and the steward system working together then for a time or did the steward system phase into the committee system later on? I'm wondering how the mechanism of that worked.
NELSON: Well, before they would have a meeting, like plant meetings or membership meetings, the stewards and the committeemen would have a meeting. And the stewards knew the problems and they were elected stewards because they would get involved, see. And these would all be brought up and the agenda, in other words, would be set up for the membership meeting through the chief stewards and the committeemen. Then when they had the membership meeting, it would try to be thrashed over. And from that, why, they would know what grievances to try to work on.
WEST: Right. Was there a problem with wildcat strikes?
NELSON: Oh yeah.
WEST: Were they talked about in the meetings, then?
NELSON: They were never planned in the meetings.
WEST: They wouldn't be planned in the meetings but I mean was there talk about this as a problem and we've got to try to calm down and correct the wildcat strikes?
NELSON: Try to correct it...well, they didn't want us to wildcat strike. They didn't want us to wildcat strike, 'cause that's unorganized.
WEST: Right. Did people ever come in from the international or from the organizers like Bob Travis and the like to talk about that problem at these meetings? Or was it strictly inside the plant?
NELSON: Well, no, we had meetings, and Travis would be there and Mortimer might be there and Roy Reuther. Vic, he'd be there some time or Walter Reuther. And a lot of times the membership needed a little pep talk and these fellows would come around and give it to them, you know. But they were good fellows; I think they were.
WEST: Now there was a lot of talk then, at the time, and I guess since that the leadership were reds, Communist radicals and that sort of thing. The Flint Journal was full of that kind of innuendo. Was there substance to that? I mean, did you think that some of the people were Communists?
NELSON: Well, of course all we know is what we read in the paper. Roy Reuther and Vic and the Reuther brothers were all supposed to be educated in Russia. And they tried to say that they were communistic. Well, I don't know if you are interested in that or not, but I think we got a hell of a lot more communistic activities around today than they had then. But Roy Reuther, Walter Reuther, I meant to say, he was the president of the UAW. He had a set-up that was second to none of them. I mean his committees all the way through were for Reuther. And if you ever said anything back in the shop that opposed any of his ideas, then they would start red- baiting you and branding you as a Communist.
WEST: I see. What did you think of Walter Reuther then, later on?
NELSON: Well, I didn't appreciate what he was doing, because he got rid of all the fellows that ever helped him, that ever organized it. Now you take Richard...
WEST: Frankensteen?
NELSON: Frankensteen. Yeah, the organizer at Ford in Detroit. He fired him and a lot of fellows down the line he got rid of, because they opposed him, see.
WEST: Well, even before that, some of the leaders here in Flint were eased out of the union by the summer and the fall of ‘37, I guess. People like Travis were gone and Ralph Dale and Roy Reuther, too. They were transferred out, I guess, by Homer Martin. Did you know Homer Martin?
NELSON: Yeah, I heard him.
WEST: What did you think of him?
NELSON: Well, boy, he could sure talk. Boy, I think he could talk. Well, him and Roy Reuther, I think, were about two of the greatest. I think they could get an audience in a cemetery. Really.
WEST: Well, Reuther had been in Flint for a while before the strike, actually. He'd been working, as I understand it, with the education classes in that and collective bargaining in that. Did you know of his activities?
NELSON: Roy Reuther?
WEST: Yeah.
NELSON: Well, Roy Reuther was here for quite a while after the strike. And they started what they called the delegate system, because they figured that you can't get all the members down here. So each man had a certain amount of people, like from my department they were gonna have one delegate. And they would have the delegates. And the delegates could take care of this deal. I mean, in other words, bring the stuff together. Well, I was a delegate. And it didn't work out, because you go down to that meeting, and, of course, you talk to your men, and your men wanted this, or they wanted that, or what their opinions were, and you went to the delegate meeting. And there was only a few at the delegate meeting would ever get the floor. You could sit back there with your hand up for an hour and they wouldn't call on you, ‘cause, in other words, it was...he done what he wanted to do and what he figured that was best, whether it was right or whether it was wrong. That's the way it went. And then that clunked out. But still he done a lot of good.
WEST: Were you aware of a bus strike in Flint at the time of the sit-down? Apparently it was called a little earlier and then wasn't settled until later. Buses went on strike and apparently there was no transportation in Flint. It was called early in December and wasn't settled...
NELSON: Of when?
WEST: Of ‘36. It was on during the strike and I think the union organized courtesy cars and that.
NELSON: Seems like I do, it seems like I do. But as far as doin' anything about it...
WEST: Now after the strike, again in the summer of ‘37, my understanding, from the newspapers, is that there was a lot of strike activity in Flint outside of the auto industry, too. Penney's was shut down for a while. There was, in fact, a sit-in of some of th+e clerks there and there was a strike at the Durant Hotel and other places too unions tried to organize the garage repairmen and auto salesmen and the like. Do you remember any of that?
NELSON: Well, I remember of it happening, but as far as knowin' any details about it, I don't.
WEST: You weren't involved in any efforts to organize any of those people?
NELSON: No.
WEST: Did you go out of town at all to organize other places and plants that were connected with the auto industry, like Pontiac or Anderson or Owosso? Because I gather there was some activity there too.
NELSON: No.
WEST: Your work stayed pretty much then in Flint.
NELSON: Stayed right here. Well, there was a bunch of us, I don't recall what day it was when they were gonna take the boys out of south Fisher, when the National Guard was supposed to come in.
WEST: Yes.
NELSON: I was on that picket line out there.
WEST: Oh, well, that was...well, there was the Battle of Running Bulls. Is that what you're...
NELSON: The Battle of Bull Runs, that was before Plant 4 went off.
WEST: That was at Fisher 2, as I understand it.
NELSON: Yeah, the little Fisher downtown.
WEST: Did you get involved in that? Did you go down there to see it?
NELSON: No, I wasn't in the union at that time. See, that was before my time of gettin' in the union.
WEST: Were there any boys from Plant 5 that were involved in that, that were really active union people before that?
NELSON: No, not to my knowledge.
WEST: But they did become involved after. You said you went to picket duty (I didn't mean to cut you off) outside of south Fisher. When was that?
NELSON: Well, the National Guard was supposed to take the sit-down strikers out of Fisher Body, south Fisher.
WEST: When would that have been?
NELSON: Well...
WEST: After the Running Bulls?
NELSON: Oh, heavens, yes. See the Battle of Bull Runs, I think that was the first of the year.
WEST: Around the first of the year, yes.
NELSON: And then Plant 4 went down, to my knowledge, on the second of February. And this was at south Fisher during the last part of February. Anyway, the contract was signed shortly afterwards, so it wouldn't be hard to date back. The Governor Murphy stopped the National Guard. They were supposed to go in and take them guys out of there. And it's a damn good thing they didn't try it.
WEST: Oh right, right. There was an injunction. Judge Gadola had an injunction out against them and there was fear.
NELSON: Yeah.
WEST: You went down there then? NELSON: I was down there on a picket line, you see. You know where the plant is, this street here and then across the street was all kinds of people. They were across there waiting to see what they could see. And then here was the plant and there was oh, maybe fifty or a hundred of us here at a picket line.
WEST: I see. People came from all over Flint. Did they come from other places, too, Toledo and...?
NELSON: Oh, you mean union people?
WEST: Yeah.
NELSON: Oh, yes.
WEST: So there must have been a lot of people in the street there at that time.
NELSON: Well, we had fellows up here from Toledo during the sit-down strike, because you didn't have enough people to take care of it.
WEST: Right, right. Did you get to know any of those fellows?
NELSON: I never got to know any of 'em personally, no.
WEST: Nothing, of course, did happen that night. The National Guard didn't move.
NELSON: No.
WEST: But you were prepared to resist then.
NELSON: We were gonna do what we could do.
WEST: In other words, if the National Guard had moved, there would have been bloodshed.
NELSON: Oh yeah. They had the hoses on the inside all hooked up, you know, the fire hoses for water. That was the only protection they had. There wasn't any guns around or nothin' like that.
WEST: No, I understand that there weren't. But did you have clubs? Were you armed at all?
NELSON: No. We had lead in our hands and our pockets and our knees was playin' "Home Sweet Home."
WEST: You had lead blackjacks then.
NELSON: Well, they didn't give it to us, but we had it ourselves. We took it upon ourselves. We had to have somethin'.
WEST: Yeah, right. But you were a little nervous then, of course.
NELSON: Oh yeah, you had better believe that we were scared.
WEST: Sure.
NELSON: Darn right we were scared. You haven't got that hooked now, have you? No...that's all right. I'm gonna tell you somethin'.
WEST: It is, but go ahead. Be frank, because we won't...
NELSON: Well, no, this is just a little incident off the record.
WEST: Well, that's what I want. We want to get these incidents, these human interest stories.
NELSON: You know that they shut the beer out in Genesee County, because they didn't want the fellows to get, you know, they get to drinking, and they...
WEST: All right, the city authorities closed down the beer.
NELSON: And so we went over to Lennon. There was a little fellow, and his name was Bill Griffith, a real nice guy. He and I put strike duty in together. I don't know where he is today. And he had a little wife. Well, his wife and he and I went out to Lennon, because that is out of Genesee County. And we got a little canned up, and we come back in and we took her down to the Pengelly Building. And this is what we shouldn't have done. Like I told you before, they had a dance upstairs and you know, they did anything to try to keep people around. I mean decent, see. And Bill and I, we had stayed there two or three nights previously and we had slept on cots. And we get upstairs and she says, "Oh, you son of a bitch, no wonder you are
staying down here two or three nights, all these women around!" You know, and honest to God, she took him and I don't believe he hit three steps all the way down. And there was three flights of stairs. He didn't do any more strike duty at the Pengelly Building.
WEST: Oh my, so you had some fun anyway or something interesting, at times. You mentioned that the beer halls were closed then.
NELSON: Yeah, they closed everything up in Genesee County.
WEST: Did the men get any booze into the plants then anyway? Because some of them, I imagine, as you said, were pretty good drinkers, you know.
NELSON: Well, I don't know. I don't really know. I was never involved in any of that. I don't know if they had any beer into it or not. I know, of course, just hearsay, I know that GM tried to pull a few crooked tactics too and get these guys out of there and get 'em in trouble, so that their wives would get on their fannies, too. WEST: Can you elaborate on that at all?
NELSON: Well, all I know is what I heard. I don't know.
WEST: Well, can you tell me what you heard?
NELSON: Well, it's just like I told you; I don't know.
WEST: Did you encounter any Flint Alliance people, back to work people? People who were out of work and weren't sympathetic to the union and who, you know, said that they were gonna kick the guys out of the plants. George Boysen apparently led that movement. They had a big meeting at the IMA ,and GM made the most of that back-to-work movement, claiming that most of the workers wanted to go to work and they were being prevented from doing so by the minority.
NELSON: I heard about things, but I never got in contact with it. I really wouldn't know.
WEST: Nobody came around then to talk to you about getting in that?
NELSON: No, no.
WEST: Did your wife encounter any opposition?
NELSON: No, no.
WEST: You were living...were most of the neighbors where you lived sympathetic, then, to the strike?
NELSON: Well, I had the one neighbor on one side that I signed up. He was a good fellow who belonged to the union. And on the other side there wasn't any man. I didn't know my neighbors that well. But nobody ever bothered anybody.
WEST: You mentioned there were some Mexicans who were involved in Plant 5. Did they sign up with the union?
NELSON: Oh yes.
WEST: They did.
NELSON: They were all good union fellows.
WEST: Where did they live then, do you remember?
NELSON: Most of 'em lived down around St. John Street. It's all gone now, and Leith and back in there. WEST: Oh, well that was where a lot of the ethnic people lived, the Polish and Hungarian.
NELSON: That's right.
WEST: Were there many Poles and Hungarians in Plant 5 then?
NELSON: No, there wasn't. One Hungarian fellow, Joe Iganice, he was the only one in Plant 5 that I knew.
WEST: Was he union?
NELSON: Yeah, he joined the union, but he didn't belong to it at that time.
WEST: Again, from what you say that most of 'em didn't belong, but they joined after the seizure of Plant 4 and that.
NELSON: They did and they came in real good.
WEST: Did you have any trouble with some who wouldn't join? Did you have to use any force?
NELSON: Well, we had one in there or we had a couple in there. We didn't have any objections if a man didn't want to belong to the union if he kept his mouth shut. By that, I mean it would come payday, and you would get your check, and he would hold his check up and say, "You son of a bitches, I got just as much as you do, and I don't need to pay for this," you know, in the union. Well, somebody like that we took care of them. No, we didn't beat 'em or anything, but we had a lot of stories going rumored around that "boy when they got out of work that night they were really gonna get the business...really get the business." And the two that we pulled that on come up to us and wanted somebody to walk out with 'em so that they wouldn't. And the only way you can avoid that is just sign up for the union here. So they did and that was all there was to it.
WEST: So you didn't have to carry out your threats.
NELSON: No, no, no. We wouldn't have anyway because it was just a made up story, see. There wasn't anybody who would do that. You know, it depends upon the man. If he wants to get along, he can get along, you know. But you know, there's always some smart alecks that want to make somethin' out of somethin'.
WEST: Sure. Now after the strike was over and on into ‘38 and ’39, there was a split between the A F of L and the CIO, or at least between the Homer Martin people and those who were opposed to Homer Martin. Did you get involved in any of that split and those activities?
NELSON: No, I didn't get involved in any of that. I know that he left. I always liked Homer. Of course, I did. I liked him like most anybody else would have. I never knew him personal. All I did was hear him talk and this and that. WEST: Well, apparently he accused some of his opponents, including Travis and others, of being Communists. And there was a split, then, that broke out, and I guess part of Flint was a battleground for a while between those two rival factions in the UAW. And I've talked to some people who were quite involved in that on one side or the other. But you didn't know anything about that.
NELSON: No, I wasn't in on any of that.
WEST: Did you know of it then? Were any of your friends or people that you knew involved?
NELSON: No, no.
WEST: Now in 1940, as I understand it, this culminated in a National Labor Relations Board election between the Martin A F of L group and the CIO group. Do you remember how you...if you voted in that election or how you may have voted then?
NELSON: Nope. 1940?
WEST: Well, it isn't that basic. I just wonder...we've covered a good many topics. I wonder if you can think of anything that we haven't touched on that you would like to mention.
NELSON: No. I could tell you a couple of fellows you might go and see.
WEST: I'd like that very much, yes indeed. That's the next thing.
NELSON: There's George Gustafson in Russellville.
WEST: George Gustafson in Russellville. Do you have his address?
NELSON: No, no.
WEST: Where's Russellville?
NELSON: Do you know where Davison Road is?
WEST: Oh, yes.
NELSON: Okay, I'll tell you right now. Davison Road...or is it Richfield Road? Do you know where Richfield Road is?
WEST: Yes, oh yes.
NELSON: You go out Richfield Road and... Let me see if I can get this out of town map.
THE END