Representation and Rebellion: The Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1914-1942

8: Depression, Frustration, and Real Competition

181 [T]he success of the Joint Representation Plan within the Minnequa Plant has been largely due to the continual efforts on the part of the men and representatives to keep it morally clean. I have never considered our Plan a “paper plan.” If these things which have come to mean so much to the employees, and which came to them through the Plan, are to be discontinued or modified, I think it will in some measure destroy the spirit and attitude of the men towards the Plan of Joint Representation within the Minnequa Plant of the C.F.&I. Co. —Andrew Diamond to John D. Rockefeller Jr., August 23, 19331 Throughout the 1920s, John D. Rockefeller Jr. took his family on various vacations in the American West and often stopped in southern Colorado. While visiting Pueblo in 1926, Rockefeller and his sons toured the Minnequa Works twice in the same day—once during the morning and once during the evening so the boys could see the plant in operation both during the day and at night, when the fires in the furnaces were more impressive.2 Unlike his earlier trips in 1915 and 1918, few reporters followed Rockefeller on this visit. However, the Industrial Bulletin does mention that he met with a delegation of employee representatives from the steel mill, including the representatives’ chair, Andy Diamond. At the next regular meeting of the workers who served under the employee representation plan (ERP), Diamond “stated that during the interview Depression, Frustration, and Real Competition 182 D e p r e s s i o n , F r u s t r a t i o n , a n d R e a l C o m p e t i t i o n Mr. Rockefeller said he would be glad to have those present carry back to the men the information that he is more interested in the success of the Industrial Plan today than ever before, and to thank the representatives for the important part they play in making the Plan a success.”3 Almost seventy-five years later Rockefeller’s son David recalled, “We spent a day in Pueblo touring the Colorado Fuel & Iron’s large steel mills and meeting representatives of the company union. Father greeted a number of the men by name, and they seemed pleased to see him. I remember being a bit startled by the experience but impressed with my father’s forthright manner and the easy way he dealt with the men and their families.”4 This warmth was a sign that the employee representatives at the steelworks still trusted Rockefeller to follow through on the promises he had made during the early days of the plan. After the devastating strike of 1927–1928, however, Rockefeller’s interest in employee representation at Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) wavered. By September 1928 the company’s stock had recovered from the low it experienced during that dispute and was higher than it had been in years. “While the company is doing very well,” Rockefeller wrote Mackenzie King in 1928, “its future from an income producing point of view is still much in doubt. My associates have on various occasions urged me to sell my stock. . . . [W]ould you think it a serious mistake on my part, in so far as the Industrial Relations Plan, which you and I set up there, is concerned?”5 Since Rockefeller chose not to sell, it seems reasonable to assume that King’s answer was yes, even though no record exists of his response. This indicates at least some lasting support for the idea that employee representation could work at CF&I. His response to his son John D. Rockefeller III’s 1929 Princeton senior thesis, “Industrial Relations Plans: A Study,” also indicates Rockefeller’s strong personal stake in the topic. “It has given me unspeakable pleasure to find the extent and breadth of your interest in the industrial relations problem,” he wrote. “Your knowledge of the subject is far greater than I had imagined and many times more than mine at your age. It pleased me immensely too [sic] find that you so quickly saw the point of view which I have taken in these matters.”6 While this praise might be expected from a father to a son, the sentiments Rockefeller conveys nonetheless denote that his support for the plan was flagging because of the contents of that thesis. 183...