Description
Twenty-seventh President of the United States, signed letter by William H Taft.
Great labor-related content T.L.S. as the Chairman of the National War Labor Board, 1p. large 8vo., Pointe-a-Pic, Canada, Aug. 22, 1918, to his alternate co-chair FREDERICK JUDSON (1845 – 1919).
Taft agrees, somewhat non-committally, to a proposal put forward by his subordinate Judson, adding no emendations or suggestions.
It reads: ‘..Thank you for sending me the paper which you and Walsh have signed. It seems to me you have reached a very wise conclusion…I felicitate you on securing Walsh’s signature to your sound views…’ Fine condition.
The National War Labor Board was a federal agency established during World War I to mediate conflicts between capital and labor, joining these two forces for the first time in an official capacity. President Wilson ordered each group to assign a ‘co-chair’ to lead the organization; the labor chose Frank P. Walsh (also mentioned above), the nation’s most prominent labor attorney, while the business end chose former President Taft, who named Judson – who had previously provided counsel to the Roosevelt and Taft administrations on labor-related matters – his alternate. Yet, within a matter of months of the board’s creation, Taft ‘virtually withdrew’ from his duties and left Judson as unofficial co-chair for the majority of its existence. Though in existence for less than two years, the NWLB’s influential decisions validated unions as a political force and legitimized worker demands like never before, setting a new tone for labor-capital relations for decades. Yet Judson, a decade older than Taft and then over seventy years old, had little time to enjoy life and died just months after the group was disbanded. A great content letter with a fascinating backstory.
