William Hammatt Davis

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William Hammatt Davis
William Hammatt Davis (right)
BornAugust 29, 1879
Bangor, Maine
DiedAugust 13, 1964(1964-08-13) (aged 84)
NationalityAmerican
Alma materGeorge Washington University
OccupationChairman of the War Labor Board (WLB)
SpouseGrace D. Davis
RelativesOwen Davis (brother)

William Hammatt Davis (August 29, 1879 – August 13, 1964) was the Chairman of the

National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act) of 1935, which gave labor unions the right to organize.[1]

Early life

Born and raised in

U.S. Patent Office, but he soon left to become a successful New York patent attorney. He returned to government service briefly in World War I, working in the War Department.[2]

New Deal and wartime service

When Franklin Roosevelt formed the National Recovery Administration (NRA) early in the New Deal, Davis was tapped as Deputy Administrator. The NRA was declared unconstitutional and disbanded in 1937, and Davis returned to New York to head the state's Labor Mediation Board. He developed such a good reputation as a mediator between management and labor that Roosevelt brought him back to Washington in 1941 to join (and soon chair) the National Defense Mediation Board (NDMB), which became the War Labor Board (WLB) in early 1942. Davis ran the Board until March 1945, when, seeing the end of the war in sight, Roosevelt named him Director of Economic Stabilization, to manage the return to a peace-time economy.[3]

The NDMB-WLB Chairmanship was an important yet difficult position, Davis having to walk the line between management and organized labor. Though generally trusted by both sides, his main job was to strongly discourage strikes for the duration of the war. A frequent figure in news articles of the 1940s, Davis' success was often ascribed to his personality and appearance. The news magazine Time described him variously as "rumple-haired", "dry-humored", "shaggy", "humane", "tendacious", "chunky", and "grizzled", but above-all patient and fair-minded.[4] A 1941 Time article praised his "phenominal [sic] record' of "peacably unraveling the most tangled wrangle", and declared him "one of the brightest hopes of the US had in the murky field of industrial disputes."[5]

From Roosevelt to Truman

While Roosevelt seemed to set up Davis as the 'czar' of post-war recovery by appointing him Economic Stabilizer, Harry Truman fired him within months of taking office, and eliminated his potentially powerful role.[6] Davis became an open critic of Truman's labor policies, but the two must have reached some degree of accommodation by 1949, when Truman appointed Davis to head the Atomic Energy Commission's Labor Relations Panel.[7]

Other activities

Davis was involved with progressive New York philanthropic and cultural organizations throughout his career. While on the Labor Committee of

New School for Social Research

Davis' wife, Grace D. Davis, died in 1972.[8]

References

  1. ^ Richard Magat, Unlikely Partners: Philanthropic Foundations and the Labor Movement (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), p. 68
  2. ^ Benjamin F. Shearer, Home Front Heroes (Greenwood Press, 2007), p. 213
  3. ^ Shearer, p. 213
  4. ^ Time, June 28, 1943; Nov. 20, 1944, Mar. 19, 1945
  5. ^ Time, December 1, 1941
  6. ISBN 978-0-8262-0790-6
    .
  7. ^ Time, May 9, 1949
  8. ^ Obituary, New York Times, July 15, 1972

Further reading

Nelson Lichtenstein, "William Hammatt Davis" in Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement Seven (New York, 1981), pp. 171–173

Testimonial to William H. Davis

Davis' speeches are preserved in the archives of the Cornell University Library. Index to Speeches of William H. Davis

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