Word: auto
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Michigan's Democratic Governor G. Mennen ("Soapy") Williams cleaned up last week in the biennial spring elections for lesser state and county offices traditionally held by Republicans. Soapy stumped the state personally, staking in the campaign his prestige, and plentiful cash (donated by the United Auto Workers). On election day the Democrats took Detroit two to one, won five of the eight state offices at stake, swamped the Republican state slate for the first time in a spring election since 1933. Afterwards, the Detroit Times sized up ambitious young (44) Soapy: "The strongest leader his party...
...battle for the guaranteed annual wage in the auto industry got off to a start last week in an atmosphere of small-town friendliness. Gone was the hostility that has occasionally marked the opening of contract negotiations between the C.I.O's United Automobile Workers and General Motors. As the bargaining teams gathered in a carpeted conference room of Detroit's massive G.M. Building, there were beaming smiles all around. On one side of the 20-ft. glass-topped table sat the 18-man auto workers' committee, led by Vice President Jack Livingston, 46, one of the founders...
...speech before the United Auto Workers convention in Cleveland, Neely roared that the Eisenhower Administration is the "second everlasting monument to confusion," surpassed only by the Tower of Babel. The President, he acknowledged, was first in war. But he was also "the first of all Presidents on the golf course and the last to leave...
...Communists in his union, the United Auto Workers, he joined party discussion groups. "They seemed," he said, "to be people like myself." He signed a party card ("It had long, patriotic slogans"), and when he got a Washington job in Henry Wallace's Commerce Department, he went to "three or five" more meetings. In 1946 he quit the party. "The changing time was impressing itself on me," he said, "and I felt those people were going off on entirely the wrong track, excusing the Soviet Union and criticizing...
Nevertheless, there are some soft spots. One worry is the growing number of deceptively easy auto loans that helped push total auto credit to a record $10.6 billion in February. Finance companies have junked the traditional "one-third down and 24 months to pay," and some go as far as no down payment and five years to pay. Both banks and big finance companies such as General Motors Acceptance Corp. and C.I.T. have extended their terms from 24 to 30 months, and in some cases even to 36 months. So far, repossessions have stayed close to the low, prewar level...