1944 - Retail, Trade

Retail, Trade

Montgomery Ward CEO Sewell Avery defies the National War Labor Board, which has ruled that distributing companies like Ward's are subject to last year's Smith-Connally Act empowering the president to take over manufacturing plants useful to the war effort if they have labor disturbances. Attorney General Francis Biddle flies to Chicago in April, hoping to effect a peaceful seizure of Montgomery Ward, but Avery tells Biddle, "To hell with the government. I want none of your damned advice." Now 69, Avery has resisted orders to pay his unionized workers higher wages and enforce a closed shop, Biddle orders him ejected bodily from his office, and pictures of him being removed by soldiers appear in papers worldwide. A Gallup Poll shows that 61 percent of respondents support his position, but Gallup's resident interviewers tend to have a right-wing bias; the army takes over and operates seven key Wards stores soon after Christmas on orders from President Roosevelt.