Union Opposition Quotes
Ford was then 74 years old and had become a very different man than in his youth when he was the hero of labor. He was very paranoid at this time. He even thought that financiers were actually backing the labor unions because their purpose was to go to war against Hitler who Ford greatly admired and supported. See {642379}. He claimed that the way they would do it is to fund the labor unions so most workers would join unions. This he thought would eliminate competition and lower workers’ wages. When workers’ wages were pushed low enough, the workers would demand American entry into the war to create government spending on armaments and a labor shortage to drive wages up again. There was not a single financier who was actually paying or lending any money to labor unions, and most industrialists other than Ford complained that labor unions would always demand higher wages. Ford’s son Edsel was the chief operating officer of Ford Motor Company, and did his best to work around his father to keep the company healthy and deal with a terrible labor relations problem his father caused.
The Mormons wanted Utah to be a United States territory or a state with an extreme state’s rights mentality whereby their religious doctrine in the Book of Mormon could be state law and at the time the Constitution had not yet been amended to require the state governments to adhere to the Bill of Rights or other Federal laws. In effect they wanted a democratic type of theocracy. See {619869}. The Mormons would not agree that Federal law should govern their community or people, and war with the Federal government was imminent. In an ironic twist, Johnson, a Texan, rebelled against the nation himself several years later when he became a Confederate General. He was the highest ranking Confederate Officer killed in Battle—at Shiloh.
The President was considering a bill to deregulate the trucking industry and was informed by the Secretary of Transportation that the truck owners and the truck drivers' union were both opposed to the bill.
