The Soft Sell

As president of the huge (1,500,000-member) United Auto Workers, fire-breathing Walter Philip Reuther is a powerful organizer, bargainer, administrator, politician, social reformer. In addition, red-haired Walter Reuther is a shrewd, smooth public-relations man. Last week, invited to Washington to appear before the McClellan committee, Reuther found a capacity crowd on hand for the fireworks. But any public-relations man could recognize that the time was wrong for fireworks. In Detroit tough negotiations between the U.A.W. and the big three auto companies were under way in a climate of depression and gloom, with few rank and filers in a mood to strike for Reuthers pet profit-sharing plan (see BUSINESS). At the hearing table, Reuther kept his temper, thereby took the teeth out of traps carefully set for him.

Traps and trap setters were not even camouflaged. For four weeks three of the committee's Republicans--Arizona's Barry Goldwater, Nebraska's Carl Curtis and South Dakota's Karl Mundt had been leading the committee thorough the bitter history of the U.A.W.'s, fruitless four-year, $10 million strike against Wisconsin's Kohler Co. (TIME, March 17), second largest U.S. plumbing-fixture manufacturer (No. 1; American Radiator & Standard Sanitary Corp. , The three Republicans had long since decided the U.A.W. was at fault to their surprise. Walter Reuther was willing to agree halfway. Mass picketing for 54 days outside the Kohler firm, said Reuther, was wrong. Attacks on nonstrikers were wrong. Attacks on the homes of nonstrikers were wrong. Said Reuther: "I don't care who is responsible for violence. I don't care how severe the provocation. I will never attempt to justify it." But added he: "These things don't happen in a vacuum."

At weeks end, after Committee Accountant Carmine Bellino gave the U.A.W. top marks for accounting procedures and no corruption. Chairman John McClellan gaveleed the hearing to a halt. In four days, little had been accomplished. Good Publilc Relations Man Reuther. with a leashed temper and soft sell, had made no new enemies. More important to him, he had even discomfited those he already had.

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