John Philip Frey

Background

He was born in Mankato, Minnesota, the son of Leopold Frey, a former army officer and small manufacturer, and Julia Philomen Beaudry.

Education

Frey attended public school in Mankato until he was fourteen and then worked in a lumber camp near Ottawa, Canada, for eighteen months.

Career

He then moved to Worcester, Massachussets, where he clerked in a grocery store before becoming an apprentice iron molder in 1888. Upon completion of his training in 1891, he quickly secured a job in a local foundry.

As a young journeyman, Frey gave other activities priority over unionism, and he did not join the International Molders and Foundry Workers Union until 1893.

Yet, once a member, he quickly rose through the ranks, becoming president of his local within three months.

In 1898 he resigned this post to become treasurer of the New England conference of molders; in 1899 he advanced to vice-president of the Massachusetts State Federation of Labor; and in 1900 he began his fifty-year tenure as a vice-president of the Molders' Union.

When in 1903 he assumed the editorship of the Iron Molders' Journal, a post held until 1927, he moved his family to Cincinnati, where the union had its headquarters. Finding further advancement in the Molders' Union blocked, Frey gave most of his energy to the American Federation of Labor (AFL), becoming one of Samuel Gompers' more important lieutenants. For instance, as secretary of the Committee on Resolutions from 1909 to 1927, Frey ensured that most of Gompers' policies would be upheld by AFL conventions.

After 1914, when Gompers' attention increasingly focused on foreign affairs, so did Frey's. During World War I, Frey went on two labor missions to Europe in order to promote greater support for the war among allied trade unionists.

In 1919 he served as chairman of an AFL committee on European reconstruction, and in 1921 and 1924 he traveled to Mexico City as an AFL delegate to the Pan American Federation of Labor.

The aging Gompers successfully pushed Frey for the presidency of the divided Ohio State Federation of Labor in 1924; this was an effort to strengthen the traditional craft unionists against more progressive forces. Frey held that post until 1928.

Gompers' death in late 1924 led Frey to forge new bonds of allegiance with the conservative craft unionists on the AFL executive council, most particularly Daniel J. Tobin of the teamsters, William L. Hutcheson of the carpenters, and Arthur Wharton of the machinists. In order to enable Frey to watch out for their interests within the federation while they governed their own unions, in 1927 these leaders made him secretary of the AFL Metal Trades Department in Washington and elevated him to president in 1934.

Frey also became the leading intellectual spokesman for the federation and spent much of his time lecturing, writing, and serving on various government advisory committees. In the mid-1920's he was labor's loudest critic of scientific management, and in the early 1930's he lobbied vigorously to outlaw labor injunctions. As an arch-Republican and a defender of the AFL's voluntaristic political tradition, Frey opposed much of the New Deal's social legislation. Frey's most significant defense of craft union "purity, " however, came with his opposition to organizing mass production workers.

At the 1934 AFL convention, he spoke for those interests adamantly opposed to industrial unionism, and throughout 1935 he tried to provoke a showdown between the two forces.

In 1935 John L. Lewis established the Committee for Industrial Organization (which changed its name in 1938 to Congress of Industrial Organizations) to work for industrial unionism within the AFL.

The following year Frey guided through the AFL executive council (of which he was not even a member) the suspension of all CIO unions from the federation. Having done much to split the labor movement, Frey became the most active strategist in the AFL's war against the CIO.

Acting out of passion more than reason, he encouraged the federation to support antilabor politicians because the CIO had endorsed their prolabor opponents. And he used the newly established House Un-American Activities Committee to propagate his view that the CIO was little more than a communist front.

During World War II, while serving on the War Production Board's shipbuilding stabilization committee and the Committee on Apprenticeships, Frey continued to snipe at the CIO.

Indeed, his retirement as president of the Metal Trades Department in 1950 seemed necessary before a merger of the two organizations could be honestly explored.

In 1955 the AFL and the CIO merged.

The slightly built, conservatively dressed Frey sought to project the image of moderation and scholarly attainment. He wrote An American Molder in Europe (1911), The Labor Injunction (1922), Craft Unions of Ancient and Modern Times (1944), and several pamphlets.

In most of his writing he simply rehashed the tenets of craft unionism formulated by Gompers.

A dogmatic person, Frey held unskilled workers in disdain and inflated his own importance--even flaunting his rank of colonel in the Special Army Reserves that he received for lecturing in 1928 at the Army Industrial College. He constantly worried that he was not receiving the respect he deserved or that others were plotting to undermine him.

Such conspiratorial visions also shaped his conception of society, which he felt was being secretly controlled by socialists, bankers, or communists, depending on the temper of the times.

Frey died in Washington, D. C.

Achievements

• He joined the International Molders and Foundry Workers Union (1893) and went on to serve as its long-time vice-president (1900–1950). He was an aide to Samuel Gompers. A conservative unionist, he defended craft union "purity" and held unskilled workers in disdain. He vigorously opposed any union between the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organization, which did occur after his death.

Works

More photos

• book

  • An American Molder in Europe

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • An American Molder in Europe

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • An American molder in Europe 1910 Hardcover

    (Lang:- eng, Pages 180. Reprinted in 2015 with the help of...)

Views

Such conspiratorial visions also shaped his conception of society, which he felt was being secretly controlled by socialists, bankers, or communists, depending on the temper of the times.

Connections

On June 10, 1891, he married Nellie Josephine Higgins, the daughter of a wire worker. They had three children.

Father:

Leopold Frey

mother Julia Philomen Beaudry

Wife:

Nellie Josephine Higgins