CALIFORNIA'S NEWEST CONGRESSMAN
Moosekian, Shawn
Porfrait of John F. Shelley: California's Newest Congressman By SHAWN MOOSEKIAN SAN FRANCISCO. THERE'S AN OLD STORY, perhaps apocryphal, that when California's newest Congressman, John F....
...divided we fall," and advocated unity in the labor movement...
...Just before leaving San Francisco for Washington, Shelley addressed a luncheon of the San Francisco Commonwealth Club, formed some years ago by a newspaperman for the purpose of getting intellectuals together so they could hear what other intellectuals had to say...
...He decided against a law career because he saw in labor a "great evolutionary movement" and wanted to be part of it...
...And he's a fighter, probably of the roughest, toughest variety when aroused, as he was during the 1937 State AFL convention when he was attacked and beaten by three foes, all of whom knew they had been in a fight...
...And Shelley has his opinion about some employers, too...
...He says bickering between unions over which is to represent what workers, does nothing more than "break down the standards that labor has fought for for years...
...He got himself elected president of the Central Labor Council in 1937, and later became its secretary at $175 a week, plus expenses...
...Shelley, then chairman of the Senate Labor and Capital Committee, took the position it was wrong to base a law on one individual...
...The crowds watching the line of march applauded the youngster...
...He was elected president of the California State Federation of Labor...
...Thirty-six years later, in 1947, the proud father's prophecy came true...
...But behind the scenes there were those, especially among the Teamsters' and Sailors' unions who, for reasons political and personal, hoped for a Warren victory and rubbed the fur off the rabbit's fool in so doing...
...Even some employers like Shelley, and are said to beam with delight when he sits in on a bargaining session...
...And this," he added, "has contributed to sound labor relations...
...Shelley led 'em...
...Shelley is an energetic and ambitious man, but no more so than most in similar circumstances...
...Opposition to Shelley was based primarily on grounds that he had helped form a committee with the CIO and other groups to fight the San Francisco sales tax...
...State Senator Jack D. Metzger, a Republican, authored the anti-alien bill which, by inference alone, was aimed at Harry Bridges, then West Coast CIO director and leader of the violent 1934 waterfront strike...
...Fortunately, Shelley always remembers—he has up to now at any rate—that organized labor helped every bit of the way in his political climb...
...The bill had broader implications, he said, but nevertheless it was directed against a single person...
...There won't be another like him, he mourns...
...His dad turned to a crony and said: "Who knows, maybe he'll lead 'em some day...
...Shelley, thus, learned of labor unions and their people early in life—first from family surroundings and later as a seaman aboard a freighter, a truck driver a law student at St...
...So vigorous a campaign did Shelley launch for a Democratic November victory that he was named chairman of the California delegation to the Philadelphia convention in July, 1948...
...the regulation of loan sharks, and laws amending the unemployment insurance act...
...He has his friends...
...More recently he stepped onto the national scene to fill a seat in the United States House of Representatives left vacant by the death of Richard J. Welch...
...Shelley didn't push, and Truman named Maurice J. Tobin, former Massachusetts Governor, to the post...
...Nonetheless, a solid front of workers, regardless of their affiliation, was his battle cry...
...Shelley traced labor's progress and declared that "in San Francisco we are highly organized on both sides of the table...
...Those employers like him because of his ability to maintain a sense of humor when negotiations head into a deadlock...
...Passion and prejudice will not solve the situation...
...In line with this, Shelley urged all-out support of Truman's program by business and labor, because by so doing business will continue to prosper and with it so will labor...
...FROM THE BEGINNING Shelley backed Franklin D. Roosevelt to the hilt...
...In that year he was elected a delegate from the Bakery Wagon Drivers' Union to the San Francisco Central Labor Council...
...After a bitterly contested race, however, Shelley topped his opponent, Kenneth Bitter, of the San Diego building trades, who was the first administration-backed candidate to be defeated in years...
...He believes, for instance, that employers encourage jurisdictional disputes because they prefer to see unions warring against each other rather than attacking them...
...Welch was a registered Repulican, elected to the House from San Francisco's Fifth District whose registration is more than 2-to-l Democratic...
...Labor also says it sent Shelley to Sacramento, where he served eight years as State Senator from San Francisco...
...In the understand*^ of Congressman Shelley, sent to Washington by means of a special election, it is helpful to remember something of Shelley's father, an Irish longshoreman, and a good labor union man of the school that everyone is entitled to his own thoughts...
...Shelley is a big man...
...This nearly cost him the presidency of the State AFL in 1947...
...As president of the California Federation of Labor, Shelley succeeded in obtaining an AFL endorsement of Truman...
...The Democrats, particularly in California, he says, ought to cease their wrangling and stand together...
...As State Senator, Shelley was responsible for such legislation as the Shelley-Maloney Apprentice Training Act, often called a model for labor-management cooperation...
...Whenever hoodlums get a foothold, they either run the organization or ruin it...
...He towers over most of his colleagues...
...Since early days he has maintained, and still does, that labor should adopt some of the practices of business because organized labor unions are big business...
...His stand had been: "United we stand...
...There are those hereabout who disagree with him on this...
...He is often listed among those persons . who "come up the hard way," and he is as cognisant of his achievements to date as the newsboy-whobecame-bank-president is of his...
...Shawn Moosekian Is a staff writer for the Oakland (California) Tribune...
...From then on he has moved steadily upward...
...And oddly enough, gossip in 1943 had it that Shelley withdrew from the San Francisco mayoralty campaign because he intended to to fight Congressman Welch for his House seat...
...John Francis Shelley was the eldest of his nine children, born September 3, 1905, in that section of San Francisco known as South of Market Street where infants teeth on brass knuckles...
...That attack was blamed on Shelley's refusal to war on the rival CIO...
...He said statistics showed that "since April, 1947, of all applications the Central Labor Council received for strike sanction, 96.4 per cent^ of them were adjusted withouf work stoppage...
...Ten years later he was pretty much of the same opinion, in spite of intervening skirmishes between AFL and CIO over jurisdiction and Shelley's one-time charge that CIO was attempting to disrupt AFL organizational work in California canneries...
...Hence their surprise when in 1948 Shelley announced he would make "no push for the job" following reports he was being considered seriously for Secretary of Labor...
...SHELLEY...
...HE WAS PUBLIC-SPIRITED and active in support of his church...
...True or not, that was Shelley's first shot for labor's cause...
...One of Shelley's most bitter Senate fights took place in committee in 1939, when the so-called Metzger Bill, proposing to bar aliens from holding labor union office, was defeated 3-to-2...
...Ignatius College, which is now San Francisco University, and as a labor union leader...
...He has his enemies...
...In 1947 he was elected president of the California AFL, re-elected the following year, and still holds the job together with his Congressional one...
...THERE'S AN OLD STORY, perhaps apocryphal, that when California's newest Congressman, John F. Shelley, was six years old, he clung to his father's coattails and trotted up Market Street in a Labor Day parade...
...Among those who hold, a wecan-take-him-or-leave-him attitude, Shelley is thought of as one who leaps to answer opportunity's knock...
...In so doing he split, to a degree, the State AFL, which hitherto sentimentally favored Earl Warren, California's congenial governor who shared the GOP ticket with Thomas Dewey...
...AFL and right-wing CIO claim credit for his going to Washington...
...If Shelley had his way, the Repulicans would stand with the Democrats, too...
...He reflects that some have called labpr a "revolutionary movement," but "that's a matter of opinion...
...SHELLEY STEPPED ONTO labor's front line in 1933 and has been there since...
...Shelley was to have made the campaign as a liberal Democrat and a stout supporter of the New Deal...
...His party convictions prompted support for Harry S. Truman and in 1948 he went all-out for his return to the White House...
...He once declared: "In the desire of leaders of one side to eliminate the opposition, some leaders4 have resorted to the use of hoodlum methods...
...Of his time in Sacramento, Shelley has this to say: "I took pride in maintaining a broad outlook on behalf of all the people of San Francisco and in the exercise of independent judgment as warranted...
...Unity in political parties is another of his pet topics, though he's a firm defender of the two-party system — ne more, no less...
...The convention that year went on record opposing, among other things, an AFL-CIO merger...
...44 years old, is and always has been a Democrat, who describes himself as a dispassionate voter, following his own dictates rather than party lines...
Vol. 33 • February 1950 • No. 7
