The Papers of Robert A. Taft, Volume 3: 1945-1948

The Papers of Robert A. Taft #3

by Robert A. Taft (Editor), Clarence E. Wunderlin Jr. (Editor)

The third of a four-volume edition of the papers of Robert A. Taft This third volume in the series documents Robert A. Taft's experiences through World War II and his early postwar years. After winning a tough reelection battle as senator from Ohio in 1944, Taft moved steadily upward in the leadership ranks of his party and assumed a preeminent position among the bipartisan group of conservatives that increasingly dominated Congress.

Taft was most widely known for his leadership of the postwar effort to revise federal labor law. In 1947 he cosponsored the Taft-Hartley Act, the single most important piece of labor legislation passed in the aftermath of World War II. These amendments to the 1935 National Labor Relations Act defined "unfair" union practices, banned closed shops, and authorized court injunctions that would delay strikes that harmed national security by imposing an eighty-day cooling-off period. In the immediate postwar years Taft recognized the need for federal aid to education, social welfare legislation that assisted the poor, and federal support for public housing. The senator campaigned vigorously for education-assistance legislation (which failed to pass the House of Representatives) and cosponsored the Taft-Wagner-Ellender Housing Act to subsidize residential construction. This volume continues the contribution that The Papers of Robert A. Taft provides to the study of United States political and diplomatic history, Ohio history, and conservative political theory.

584 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2003

About the author

Robert Alphonso Taft (September 8, 1889 – July 31, 1953) was a conservative American politician, statesman, and presidential hopeful who served as a United States Senator from Ohio from 1939 until his death in 1953. A member of the Republican Taft political family, he was the elder son of William Howard Taft (the 27th President of the United States and 10th Chief Justice of the United States).

Taft was the Senate's main opponent of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal domestic policies.

After the president's death, Taft successfully led the conservative coalition's efforts to curb the power of labor unions. Taft was a leading advocate of non-interventionism in foreign policy. He failed in his quests to win the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 1940, 1948, and 1952. Throughout that period he battled New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey (leader of the moderate "Eastern Establishment") for control of the party. Taft's biographer, James T. Patterson, portrayed Taft as honest, conscientious, courageous, dignified, and highly intelligent but also faulted Taft's competitiveness, lack of public-relations skills, and extreme partisanship. A 1957 Senate committee named Taft as one of America's five greatest senators, along with Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and Robert M. La Follette, Sr..