Fred Allan Hartley

Background

Fred Allan Hartley was born on February 22, 1902 in Harrison, New Jersey, United States. He was the son of Fred Allen Hartley, a produce merchant and realtor, and Frances Hartley (Hartley was her maiden name, but she was not related).

Education

Hartley attended public school in Kearny, Rutgers Preparatory School, and Rutgers University for two years.

Career

Hartley boxed as an amateur welterweight, coached boys' teams, and organized a jazz band at Rutgers, the Hartley Joy Boys, in which he was pianist.

Hartley involved himself in Republican campaigning in New Jersey, winning elections as Kearny's library commissioner in 1923, police and fire commissioner in 1925, and county Republican chairman in 1925.

He served on the Labor Committee, but lacking sympathy for its strongly prolabor majority, he participated little. Nonetheless, he received endorsements from the American Federation of Labor (AFL) until about 1942, primarily because he voted for legislation to protect craft unions from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

Republican leaders interpreted the party's victory in the congressional elections of 1946 as a mandate to revise New Deal legislation. The House leaders, Joe Martin and Charles Halleck, turned to Hartley to oversee the writing and passing of labor bills. Impressed by his wartime zeal in investigating alleged abuses in the OPA, they persuaded him to take the chairmanship of the reorganized Education and Labor Committee, even though he was second in seniority and possessed little expertise in labor relations. That committee contained a large number of freshman members, including Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Robert Taft became chairman of the Senate Labor Committee, the Republican strategy apparently having been for that committee to draft a series of bills for Hartley to push through the House.

Hartley helped draft and pass the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, better known as the Taft-Hartley Act. He led in producing a stricter bill than many, including Taft, had favored or thought possible; he insisted on one omnibus bill to include all important points; and he promoted passage by a large bipartisan vote that held together for a record-breaking override of President Truman's veto (331-83) in June 1947, though Hartley exaggerated his role in his book Our New Labor Policy (1948).

The Hartley bill, drafted by corporation lawyers he selected, outlawed the closed shop, required an anti-Communist oath from labor officials, imposed criminal penalties for corruption, prohibited secondary boycotts and industrywide bargaining, and allowed states to pass right-to-work laws. All except the ban on industrywide bargaining survived.

Hartley's insistence on one bill and his success in presenting it as an attack on corruption and Communist influence in unions, both highly publicized in 2 million words of testimony before his committee, was his greatest contribution. This became a bill that most Democrats and nearly all Republicans felt they could not afford to oppose. Its passage marked the first major revision of the New Deal.

Hartley's hope that the Taft-Hartley Act would prove only a first step in controlling big labor was dashed by Truman's reelection in 1948. Hartley, who had decided as early as 1946 to let the Eightieth Congress be his last, became a lobbyist, business consultant, and defender of the Taft-Hartley Act on the lecture circuit. The defeat of repeated efforts to amend or repeal the law perhaps owes something to his efforts.

Hartley broke with the liberal wing of the New Jersey party in 1954 and sought a seat in the United States Senate by a write-in campaign against Clifford Case, but failed. Thereafter, he devoted less time to politics and more to cattle farming.

He died in Linwood, New Jersey.

Achievements

• Fred Allan Hartley was is remembered as a notable politician and representative of the Republican party. He became the youngest man ever elected to Congress and for twenty years served his New Jersey distric. Hartley was a typical representative of Republican Party, particularly in labor relations. In 1947 a strong bill would have passed with or without his help; nonetheless, he played a significant role in molding and moving it. He helped lead the first successful Republican revision of the New Deal.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Our New National Labor Policy: The Taft-Hartley Act and the Next Steps
  • Our new national labor policy : the Taft-Hartley Act and the next steps

Politics

Hartley was a party loyalist, and his political views were in the mainstream of New Jersey Republicanism. Before 1947, Hartley spoke little on the House floor and introduced few bills. The only bill labeled with his name established a boxing commission for the District of Columbia.

Although conservative, Hartley was more pragmatist than ideologue and could make exceptions to his small-government, laissez-faire principles. In 1937 he introduced a bill granting the Federal Trade Commission authority to eliminate abuses in child labor.

After the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935, his misgivings about organized labor intensified. He argued that federal regulation of unions was a necessity. During World War II his strong advocacy of antistrike legislation cost him the support of the AFL leadership.

After the war, he favored dismantling the Office of Price Administration (OPA) and voted for the tax-reduction bill. He opposed the poll tax and supported the 1953 tidelands oil bills. His speeches extolled free enterprise, states' rights, and strictly limited national government.

Hartley held strong isolationist views throughout the 1920s and 1930s, opposing revision of the neutrality laws, lend-lease, and peacetime conscription. His views changed after Pearl Harbor: he supported the war effort and favored internationalist postwar policies such as United Nations membership, the Marshall Plan, and the Truman Doctrine.

He strongly supported Taft for president but rallied to Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952.

Interests

• Politicians

  Harry S. Truman

Connections

Hartley married Hazel Lorraine Roemer on January 30, 1921; they had three children.

His son, Al Hartley, was a cartoonist best known for his work on Archie Comics.

Father:

Fred Allen Hartley

Mother:

Frances Hartley

Spouse:

Hazel Lorraine (Roemer) Hartley

Daughter:

Lorraine (Hartley) Hermann

Son:

Henry Allan Hartley

Son:

Jack Hartley

References

• Truman and Taft-Hartley;: A question of mandate
• Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections