Word: homerically
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Homer Martin had just bared his pearls in one of the most fantastic episodes in U. S. Labor history. In 1934-35 the onetime Baptist minister in Kansas City helped organize U. A. W. as an A. F. of L. union. In 1936 he took it into C. I. O. In 1937 he fought and won a bitter strike with General Motors, signed up that giant, and all motormakers except Henry Ford. In 1938, he quarreled with his co-founders and lieutenants, and his union of 375,000 men (third largest in C. I. O.) was saved from falling apart...
Then events followed fast. Homer Martin had requested such a convention, but he denounced it, charging that the terms of the call gerrymandered it against him. So he issued his own call for a convention and suspended 15 board members including Messrs. Frankensteen. Mortimer and potent little Walter Reuther of Detroit. They retaliated by impeaching him. He caught them napping. Early one morning he and a dozen huskies marched into U. A. W. headquarters, seized the union records and bank books, locked the offices, transferred everything to Mr. Martin's suite in the Eddystone Hotel...
Thus by the week end the Labor scene was in turmoil. Homer Martin, who seemed on his way to fame & power in 1937, was on the outside looking in at C. I. O. Two leaderships laid claim to U. A. W.'s contracts, bank accounts, membership. John L. Lewis' receivership for the union was itself in temporary bankruptcy. It appeared that only the rank & file could save U. A. W. from permanent disruption. And the shadow of a new figure appeared on the U. A. W. stage...
...executive board session which erupted last week was called primarily to demand from Homer Martin a report on what he and Harry Bennett, personnel director of Ford Motor Co., were up to together in recent meetings (TIME. Nov. 23, et ante). The Mortimer-Frankensteen faction this week asked a circuit court in Detroit to restrain Homer Martin from consummating an "illegal conspiracy" with Ford "to disrupt the union and establish a company-dominated fake. . . .:' Messrs. Frankensteen and Mortimer suspected that a deal was in the making whereby canny Mr. Bennett would deliver 100,000-odd Ford workers (and union...
Last week Ward Culver, attorney for an organization of Ford workers called the Liberty Legion of America, Inc., announced its dissolution "as an independent labor organization" and attributed the action to talks between Martin & Bennett. Garrulous Homer Martin was said to have gushed in private that Ford would be glad to set him up at the head of a union, perhaps confined to Ford workers and unaffiliated with C. I. O. Henceforth Mr. Harry Bennett, whether he made himself so or was made so by the factionalists. may have to be taken into account as a big figure...