Alexander F. Whitney was an American railway worker.
Background
Alexander F. Whitney was born on April 12, 1873 in Cedar Falls, Iowa, the oldest of the three sons and two daughters of Joseph Leonard Whitney and Martha Wallin (Batcheller) Whitney. His father, a farmer and schoolteacher, came to Iowa from his native Ontario, Canada, where the Whitney family had lived since migrating from New York state in the early nineteenth century; Alexander's mother was born in Iowa, the daughter of settlers from New England. As a child, Whitney knew considerable poverty. In a vain attempt to make a living from farming and part-time teaching, his father moved the family to a homestead in Nebraska in 1880 and to a farm in Cherokee, Iowa, four years later. Finally, yielding to his strong desire to preach, the elder Whitney studied for the clergy and, after ordination as a Methodist minister, became a circuit rider in Iowa in 1891. From his father, Whitney derived a hatred of oppression and a deep sympathy for the problems of the poor.
Education
He was tutored at home and later attended school for a time in Iowa.
Career
In 1888, at the age of fifteen, he went to work as a news vendor on the Illinois Central Railroad, and two years later he became a brakeman. Over the next seventeen years he worked as a brakeman for several midwestern railroads, despite the loss of parts of two fingers in an accident in 1893. The 1890's were marked by economic depression and labor strife, and Whitney was quick to sense the importance to workingmen of collective action. Despite the considerable gains made by the "big four" railroad brotherhoods - already known as the "aristocracy of the labor movement" - their conservative leaders put greater emphasis on union insurance programs than on hard bargaining with management. Whitney joined the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen (BRT) in 1896 and within nine months was elected master of his local lodge. Rising in the union hierarchy, he served as chairman of the grievance committee (1901 - 1907), and as a member of the Grand Trustees (1905 - 1907). In 1907 Whitney was elected a vice-president of the BRT, a post he held until 1928. During these years his labor philosophy grew more aggressively liberal, honed as it was in a continuous struggle against railroad bosses, political frustrations, and the intractable conservatism of the president of the trainmen's union, William G. Lee. Whitney was a member of the National Labor Committee, which urged President Wilson to support the Adamson Act of 1916 granting the eight-hour day to railroad employees; and following World War I, he strongly backed the Plumb Plan, which called for continued government management of the nation's railroads. A political independent with little interest in party labels, Whitney reserved his endorsements for candidates with prolabor records. In 1923 he was named a member of the executive committee of the Illinois Conference for Progressive Political Action, and the following year he enthusiastically supported the Progressive presidential bid of Sen. Robert M. La Follette. After several previous attempts to unseat Lee, Whitney was finally elected president of the BRT in 1928 and was reelected thereafter until his death. He was well suited by temperament and philosophy to meet the emerging problems of depression, unemployment, and the technological changes in transportation that challenged the supremacy of the railroads. Whitney fought vigorously, if unsuccessfully, in the 19306 to prevent carriers from effecting major salary reductions. He supported the Railroad Retirement Act of 1935, and the Harrington safety amendment to the Omnibus Transportation Act of 1940. A warm friend of New Deal labor policies, he helped launch the Political Action Committee, headed by Sidney Hillman, which worked for the reelection of President Roosevelt in 1944. Whitney chafed at wage controls imposed during World War II, and when the hostilities ended, he determined to bring about substantial increases. This led to a celebrated confrontation with President Harry Truman in May 1946, in which Whitney and Alvanley Johnson of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers refused to accept an arbitrated rail settlement and threatened a strike. An infuriated Truman went before Congress and asked for the power to draft strikers into the army, a request rendered moot by the last-minute settlement of the dispute. Whitney, who had backed Truman for the vice-presidential nomination in 1944, reacted strongly to this action; his split with the president proved temporary, however, and in 1948 he supported Truman's bid for a full presidential term. Whitney died of a heart attack at his home in Bay Village, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. After funeral services attended by many dignitaries, he was buried in Cleveland's Lakewood Cemetery.
Achievements
He became president of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen (BRT). He was an influential labor leader during the Great Depression and World War II, and in the years immediately following the war. He was the principal leader of a two-day railroad strike in May 1946 that paralyzed the nation.
An energetic, peppery man, Whitney had a keen mind and an acute political awareness. If he brooked little opposition within his own union (some called him autocratic), he never hesitated to confront Congress or the president in defense of the interests of the rank and file.
Connections
On September 7, 1893, Whitney married Grace Elizabeth Marshman of Hubbard, Iowa. They had three children: Joseph Lafeton, Everett Alexander, and Lydia Marie. His first wife died in 1923, and on July 2, 1927, he married Dorothy May Rawley of Oak Park, Ill.
