George Leonard Berry was an American labor leader and politician. He served as a Democratic United States Senator from Tennessee from 1937 to 1938.
Background
George Berry was born on September 12, 1882, in Lee Valley, Tennessee, United States, one of at least two children of Thomas Jefferson Berry and Cornelia (Trent) Berry. In Berry's evidently romanticized version of his background, his father was a Civil War captain, state legislator, and county official, and was killed in 1884 while serving as a deputy United States marshal. State legislative and Civil War records do not list his name. When George's mother was unable to keep the family together, the boy was placed in an orphanage and then in a foster home in Mississippi.
Education
George received limited education.
Career
Berry’s first job was at the Evening News, Jackson, Mississippi. After serving as a private in the Spanish-American War, Berry found employment in the pressroom of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. He then moved to San Francisco, where, besides working as a printer, he did exhibition boxing to supplement his income, and later prospected for gold in Nevada. By 1907 he had become superintendent of a large commercial printing plant in San Francisco. Berry had joined the fledgling International Printing Pressmen and Assistants' Union in 1899. He became secretary and business agent of its San Francisco branch and served as president of the city's Central Labor Council. In 1907, because of a deadlock between contending factions, the twenty-four-year-old Berry was elected president of the Pressmen's Union, a position he was to hold until his death.
By 1910 he had moved the union's national headquarters from Cincinnati, Ohio, to a permanent site near Rogersville, Tennessee. There Berry established the Pressmen's Home, a retirement residence for union members, together with a tuberculosis sanatorium and a trade school to improve the members' technical skills. He also reformed the union's election and convention procedures; inaugurated an old-age pension fund; founded, with other crafts, the International Allied Printing Trades Association, with a union label; and extended the union's jurisdiction over lithographic offset printing.
During World War I, Berry served with the Engineer Corps in France and attained the rank of major, a title by which he was commonly known thereafter. After the Armistice he was named a labor adviser to the Paris Peace Commission. A tough, blunt man, Berry nevertheless believed in conciliation and labor peace. His thought closely followed the "business unionism" of Samuel Gompers. Viewing labor's prosperity as dependent on that of business, Berry insisted upon arbitration and abhorred strikes. He secured nationwide arbitration agreements with newspaper publishers and employing printers. Twice he broke wildcat strikes of his own locals to enforce the sanctity of contract, and he frequently attacked radicalism, defending what he called the "American way" of "profit and exchange. "
At Rogersville, Berry built up extensive holdings of farmland and other property, both for his union and himself. Indeed, he seems to have viewed the two interests as interchangeable. During World War I, he transferred $165, 000 from the union's pension fund to build a privately owned electric plant to provide cheaper power to the Pressmen's Home. A federal court in 1921 ordered him to return the money, but Berry, then as at other times, had the loyal support of union members, and the case was subsequently dismissed. In 1927, with authorization from the union's convention, Berry organized the International Playing Card and Label Company at Rogersville to compete with nonunion firms in the field. A successful venture which employed several hundred workers, it was financed by union loans of nearly $900, 000, on the understanding that Berry would leave his interest in the company to the union at his death.
Berry, a lifelong Democrat, took some part in Tennessee politics. He unsuccessfully sought the nomination for governor in 1914 and United States senator in 1916. In 1924, perhaps as a reflection of the recent upsurge in labor political activity, he came within three votes of receiving the Democratic vice-presidential nomination. In 1928 he campaigned vigorously for Alfred E. Smith. During the New Deal, Berry served as a labor representative on two boards of the National Recovery Administration and as a divisional administrator. In 1936 he joined Sidney Hillman and John L. Lewis in organizing Labor's Non-Partisan League, a political action group dedicated to the reelection of President Franklin Roosevelt, and served as its first president.
Berry's prominence in the 1936 campaign led to mention of him as a possible cabinet appointee. The following year he was appointed by the governor of Tennessee to an unexpired term in the United States Senate, but he was defeated for renomination in the Democratic primary of 1938. By this time Berry had begun to withdraw support from the New Deal, and even came to refer to it as "state socialism. "
Berry died of a gastric hemorrhage at the Pressmen's Home in Rogersville in 1948 and was buried in the cemetery there. His will left extensive real estate and a half-ownership of a local newspaper to the Pressmen's Union, but not his interest in the playing card company. The bequests proved of little practical value, since Berry had been convicted shortly before his death of income tax evasion, and the fine took all of his estate and more. Appraisals of Berry have differed. Some saw him as a symbol of autocratic and corrupt union leadership. A congressional investigation after his death concluded that he had indeed "misused" union funds and had employed "economic compulsion" against protesting locals, but hesitated to question either his motives or the success of his union in promoting its members' interests.
Achievements
George Berry was president of the International Pressmen and Assistants' Union of North America from 1907 to 1948. He reformed some union's procedures and created a pension fund. In 1911, he encouraged the acquisition of the Hale Springs Resort near his boyhood home as a mineral water resort for union members suffering from consumption. The resort became the union's international headquarters. The facility had an extensive complex that included a sanitarium, hotel, post office, chapel, hydro-electric plant and trade school. The complex became known as the Pressmen's Home.
Religion
Berry was a Southern Baptist in religion and a member of many fraternal orders.
Politics
Berry was a member of the Democratic Party. He supported Wendell Willkie in the 1940 presidential race, and during the 1940's he became a spokesman for the most conservative faction of the A. F. of L.
Personality
Stocky and balding, with shell-rimmed glasses, always impeccably groomed, Berry was a dignified and persuasive figure.
Connections
On August 7, 1907, Berry married Marie Margaret Gehres; they had no children.
