Oral History Interview with Edward F. Prichard, Jr., February 9, 1983

Hellard:Side one, Edward Prichard. Today’s date is February the 9th, 1983. Mr. Prichard, last time we talked, we talked about you were just getting ready to leave Justice [Felix] Frankfurter and—as his law clerk.

:That’s correct. And that was the summer of 1940. And of course that was a very, I wouldn’t want to say exciting period, because that sounds as if, you know, excitement of hopeful nature was involved. It was a very tense period. If you’ll recall, the summer of 1940 was the—the fall of , the battle of . The tensions of the war were heightened. There was great division in the country about preparedness, about our foreign policy. And some of the old domestic controversies of the New Deal era were fading a bit as the issues of foreign policy and defense were coming to the fore. And there was a feeling, really, of panic and terror. After all, the German armies had swept across . The British has been expelled from the continent. And the battle of , the air battle over , was about to start. And all those things were—[Winston] Churchill had become prime minister, succeeding [Neville] Chamberlain. All those things had come very fast. The war started in October, I believe, September or October, 1939, and in less than a year, the scene had changed from the “phony war,” where no battles were fought—everything, all the armies were stationary—to the sudden blitzkrieg of the Nazis across , the , , , . Completely transformed the picture of . In October 1939 was divided. There was and and then there was the Balkan and eastern European countries, which were somewhat under German influence but had some independence. And then there were the western and northern European countries that were democratic. That was totally changed within less than a year. A dramatic transformation of the world situation, and—thank you—and that, you know, that had a very dramatic and sudden impact on the .

Hellard:Prich why don’t you just, your spoon’s right there.

:Thank you, thank you sir, obliged to you. And if you’ll recall in the summer just before the war broke out, President Roosevelt had tried to get the so-called Neutrality Act amended so that we would have been in a position to sell arms and war supplies to the countries that might be engaged in a war with Hitler. He failed in that effort when Senator [William Edgar] Borah told him, when he had a meeting with the members of the foreign relations committee about it, he had better sources of information than the government and he knew there wasn’t going to be any war in Europe.

Hellard:Who was this?

:Senator Borah of , an isolationist, sort of independent Republican. So he didn’t—the Neutrality Act had not been amended at that time. And—so the question came after the fall of how were we going to be able to assist , particularly because was all that was left. And without help from us, she would have had a hard time surviving. And that was all part of the background of that flag-salute case, you know, sort of patriotic emotionalism. And there was a great wave of apprehensions about national security, and spies, fifth columnists. And of course we were at that time in a state of hostility to both the Communists and the Russians and the Germans because it was the Nazi-Soviet pact which had in many ways made possible the German initiation of the war and German victory. Because the Nazi-Soviet pact had given Hitler security on the eastern front and made it possible for him to attack France, the low countries, Scandinavian countries, not Sweden he never— And along about that same time the Soviet Union invaded Finland. And the Fins came close to beating them, but finally massive force overwhelmed them. So there was a great feeling then in this country that the Nazis and the Communists were peas in the pod. Great feeling of apprehension about our national security. And that was, of course, when we began to beef up our defenses. And the president launched, with the cooperation of the Congress, all the measures to build up the navy, build up the army, and for the first time in the history of this country we instituted a—a draft during peacetime, unheard of. Only times we’d ever had a draft before were in World War I and in the Civil War. And this was the first peacetime draft. Well those things meant a sort of a transformation with the country, the economy was beginning to change. During the eight years since the institution of the New Deal, you know, we had had some advance in economic growth and prosperity, but we still had a terrific hangover from the Depression. Still had a lot of people out of work. We still had WPA, still had CCC camps, still had low farm prices and big farm surpluses held by the government under the farm programs. But as the orders began to be placed for battleships and airplanes, the president initiated the procurement of 50,000 airplanes, something unheard of in history before—merchants ships, submarines, battleships. Now, that was what—what the atmosphere was like in June 1940 when that first term, that term on the Supreme Court was over.

Hellard:When did you first meet [President Franklin] Roosevelt?

Prichard:Oh, I guess ’39.

Hellard:Was it a social meeting, or a political meeting, or just a brief meeting or—

Prichard:No, the Frankfurters took me to the White House to dinner, in 19, I believe it was in ’39.

Hellard:Did that excite you at all?

Prichard:Well sure, sure.

Hellard:You told me you weren’t as much in awe as you—as you might have, should’ve been back in those days.

Prichard:Well, I—I regarded a dinner at the White House as a significant enough occasion to inspire a little bit of [Hellard laughs] awe. The president had heard something about me from Frankfurter and suggested that they bring me to dinner one night. So they took me there, and there wasn’t anybody there but the president and Mrs. [Eleanor] Roosevelt and the Frankfurters and me. And we ate in the family dining room. And I’ll never forget that one of the dishes that was served—and I can see them wheeling the president in, in that little chair of his, to the dining room—one of the dishes they served was green beans. And when I helped myself to the green beans when the butler passed them, I spilled some on the floor by my chair. [Hellard laughs] Well, I horribly embarrassed, particularly at the thought that when the president was wheeled out in his wheelchair, he [Hellard laughs] would go right by my little mess of green beans. And this kept me in a tizzy all during the dinner. But I was saved by Fala, who cuddled up to my chair and licked up the green beans [Hellard laughs] and left not a trace of them, so that when the president went by and Mrs. Roosevelt went by, there wasn’t any sign of my green beans. And I never was a man so grateful to a dog. [Hellard laughs]

Hellard:What was the subject of that conversation? Do you recall?

Prichard:Well, I can remember it was after [Winston] Churchill, but very soon after Churchill had become—I’m not sure whether Churchill had become prime minister or whether he was still first lord of the admiralty. If you’ll recall that when the war he came in the cabinet first lord of the admiralty in charge of the navy. And it was only after the fall of France that he became prime minister. Now I’m not clear in my mind as to which it was, but it was after he had come back in the cabinet. And I remember hearing the president saying, “And this just goes to show how opinions change so drastically.” He—the president—said he had remembered meeting Churchill in Europe during World War I, when Churchill was in the British government and the president was assistant secretary of the navy. Churchill had been first lord of the admiralty in the British government. I don’t know whether he was at the time they met, but he had been. And he and Churchill met. And I’m not sure whether it was in England that they met or perhaps in Holland, but they met. And I remember Roosevelt saying, “I found him to be just the typical English snob,” [Hellard laughs] which is about as different from the opinion that he finally had of Churchill as night could be from day. But this was before he had acquired the intimacy, and the closeness, and the feeling for Churchill that he had very soon afterwards. So that fixes the date at pretty early. And it had to be before June 1940 because that’s when I stopped being the justice’s law clerk. Now—

Hellard:Well, what was the atmosphere at the dinner? Did the Roosevelts and Frankfurters [Felix and Marion] enjoy a very informal type relationship?

Prichard:Oh yes, yes, very cozy. There was a lot of joking about the then-president of Brazil, Brazil who was named Getúlio Vargas I believe it was. And he was kind of a dictator and a demagogue, and the president was making a lot of sort of humorous and sarcastic references to him. And he was talking about the new Defense Advisory Council that was suppose to take charge of mobilizing the industrial front for war. [William S.] Knudsen and Hillman, Sidney Hillman, who was a labor leader, Knudsen the head of General Motors, was sort of part of that operation, there was some talk about that. And then I can remember that as we left, the president said to me, he said, “Drop in and see me sometime.” And my reply was, “I’ll be glad to do that if you’ll tell me just how one drops in on the president of the United States.” And he laughed about that. And I had a nice note from Mrs. Roosevelt the next day about something or other, I’ve forgotten which, very pleasant. I had written her a note. And that’s the first time I really met him. I had met him once earlier, but it was on a very big occasion. It was just a, at a kind of a dance at the White House for the younger Roosevelts, you know. And a lot of people were asked, and we went down the reception line and shook hands with the president and Mrs. Roosevelt. But it, you know, it was nothing but just—

Hellard:Hello and good-bye?

Prichard:Hum?

Hellard:Hello and good-bye?

Prichard:Yeah, that’s right. I mean there was no real connection, no conversation.

Hellard:Did Justice Frankfurter prep you in any way for this meeting?

Prichard:No, no.

Hellard:Did you get the idea that maybe Roosevelt was looking you over?

Prichard:No, no. And I don’t think he was. I just think that he had heard from, about me from Frankfurter and maybe a few other people, and just, you know, he was always wanting to meet new people and see what they were like. No, I didn’t get that feeling. May have been that he was, but I didn’t get that feeling.

Hellard:When was the next occasion you saw him?

Prichard:Oh—oh, I would say probably not until 1942.

Hellard:Well, when did you go to work in the White House?

Prichard:1942.

Hellard:What did you do in between then?

Prichard:Well, when I left Justice Frankfurter, I went to work in the—oh, well, first before we get about going to work and so forth, I want to say there was one other, something else fairly significant in the summer of June 1940, which was the time I’m talking about, the end of my service as a law clerk. And that was the marriage of Katherine Meyer and Philip Graham, which occurred in June of 1940, up at Mount Kisco, New York at the Meyer’s estate up there. And the Frankfurters were there. And that was a very, to me, memorable occasion because of my closeness to Kay and Phil Graham, and Frankfurter’s closeness. And we were there for a long weekend and the wedding was out in the garden. And I was the best man. And, you know, it was not a large wedding at all, it was very small. But that sticks in my mind because of the closeness and the fact that Phil was later the best man in Lucy’s and my wedding. And then I went to work in the attorney general’s office.

Hellard:Well now at this time was Phil—by this time had Phil taken your place as Frankfurter’s law clerk?

Prichard:Yeah, he was just in processing, yeah. He had been law clerk to Justice [Stanley] Reed.

Hellard:So he and Mrs. Graham were back in Washington during this summer, the same period you were there?

Prichard:Oh, they had been in Washington all the time that—oh, you mean after that. Yeah, oh sure they were. They moved to a little house on Thirty-seventh Street, small house on Thirty-seventh Street, and lived there. And I guess Kay lived there all during the war, till Phil—he later went away in—in the service and—and I guess she lived in that house until he came back after the war. Now he didn’t go away right then.

Hellard:Uh-huh.

Prichard:But he became Frankfurter’s law clerk. And during that term, that was the ’40-’41 term, Frankfurter, Frankfurter’s divisions with the Black-Douglas wing of the Court grew more obvious, and the lines were a bit more firmly drawn. But of course, I didn’t have the same intimate connection with the Court that I had had when I was a law clerk there. I—I still heard repercussions of things. And I then, as I said, went to work in the attorney general’s office in the Department of Justice. The—Robert Jackson was the attorney general, and the solicitor general, who is the number-two man in the Justice Department, was Francis Biddle. And both Jackson and Biddle were close friends of Frankfurter’s, and of course Jackson later his colleague on the Court. And Biddle was a Harvard Law School graduate. He had been a law clerk to Justice Holmes. Prominent Philadelphia family and a Philadelphia lawyer, somewhat of a dilettante in some ways, but really a very fine man. His wife a fine artist. And I did most of my work, I was up on the what they call the fifth floor, which was where the attorney general’s office was and the solicitor general’s office. And I did—I had a special assignment, because during the period right after the fall of France, probably in May or June of 1940, the Congress had passed a law requiring the registration of all aliens in this country, something we had never had before except during World War I. And many people that were acutely conscious of infringements of civil liberties were very apprehensive about this law. And at the same time that that law was passed, the president signed an executive order, which also created some apprehensions among civil liberties groups, transferring the immigration and naturalization services from the Department of Labor, where it has always been, to the Department of Justice. And there were many people who thought that the control of immigration, naturalization, and aliens should not be placed in what would be considered the federal law enforcement or police agency. And they were particularly disturbed by the thought that the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover would have a strong influence over those activities. So I think probably what the attorney general and Mr. Biddle, who though these matters didn’t really fall within the purview of the solicitor general, he was acting as a sort of deputy attorney general on this matter, and it was committed to his supervision. What they wanted me to do was to exercise some oversight over the way the registration of aliens was carried out and over the way the immigration and naturalization service was brought into the Department of Justice. And we were at the same time drafting regulations to control the procedure that was to be carried out in connection with the admission of immigrants and the deportation of aliens, things of that sort, control over the aliens’ residence in the country. And with me were two others who were primarily working on that for the attorney general. I was and one of my law school teachers, a young law school professor who was a great favorite protégé and junior colleague of Justice Frankfurter’s at Harvard, Henry Hart, H-A-R-T. Who was a great legal scholar and a fine teacher, who died fairly young. He’s been dead for twenty years. He was a magnificent teacher and a magnificent man. And he and I worked together on the regulations and the procedures that were put in to deal with immigration, naturalization service, and the registration of aliens. And I think that we accomplished a good deal in assuring, really, that in the Department of Justice there was more due process, more opportunity for hearings of an adversary nature, and things of that sort, than there had been in the Department of Labor. And really, it worked out pretty well at the time. And I—I think Henry and I felt that, a great satisfaction that we, you know, this was not a great, major, world-shaking issue, but it was a sensitive issue as far as civil liberties and the rights and—and privileges of aliens and foreigners were concerned. And it was a time when—historically aliens are always the victims of persecution and lack of due process when the conditions grow tense and when national security’s thought to be in danger. And we felt that the work we had done did lay groundwork for the decent treatment of aliens in a pre-war context, and in the event we got into war. And the fact is, when we did get into war, except for the horrible mistreatment of the Japanese who weren’t aliens, most of them—and that occurred after I was out of the picture and Henry Hart out of the picture—that except for the Japanese, aliens in this country were really treated with a good, much greater degree of decency and toleration in World War II than they were in World War I. You know, there was horrible treatment of Germans in World War II—World I. All kinds of persecution.

Hellard:As a part of this program were—were—did you work with bringing in immigrants, you know, specifically Jewish people from—from—from Europe?

Prichard:Yes, to some degree. That was one assignment I had that was—

Hellard:Was it an out front thing or was a it more clandestine…

Prichard:No, it wasn’t clandestine. It was fairly well out front. There were—there were certain organizations that formed, voluntary organizations, for the purpose of getting artists, intellectuals, political activists, refugee types.

Hellard:We—we—

Prichard:Now, I’m not now talking just about the Jews generally, of course there were organizations working on that too.

Hellard:We haven’t been over this have we?

Prichard:If we have, I don’t recall it.

Hellard:Well I’m having a real hard time remembering whether we’ve been over this or whether I’ve been listening to Phil Shepherd’s tapes again. But I don’t think you and I talked about this, so let’s continue.

Prichard:No, I don’t see how we could’ve.

Hellard:No.

Prichard:How about handing me one of my cigars there?

Hellard:Out of this box here?

Prichard:Uh-huh, is there one in a bearing?

Hellard:Yes.

Prichard:Uh-huh.

Hellard:I’ll get it off for you. But what—what kind of organizations were these, were these—

Prichard:Well, there was one called the Emergency Rescue Committee. That’s the one I remember most vividly because I’ll tell you who was the Washington representative and executive director of it, Alan Cranston.

Hellard:Is that right?

Prichard:Hum?

Hellard:The—the now Senator Alan Cranston?

Prichard:Now senator from California. He and his young wife Geneva, whom he later divorced a few years ago to marry a young woman, but they—that’s when I first met Alan and Geneva Cranston. And—and I would say that for thirty years after that, they sent me a Christmas card every year. And he stopped sending it to me when he got divorced, which indicated [laughing] to me Geneva had charge of the Christmas cards. But, anyway— [sound of striking matches]

Hellard:( ) get you matches that will do that?

Prichard:Isn’t there lots of matches there?

Hellard:Yeah, here’s one. Okay, now you’ve got it.

Prichard:Got it?

Hellard:Got it.

Prichard:Now, let me get back to this refugee business. There were two—two distinct problems. One was the problem of the Jews and what we later called the Holocaust, because at that time, of course, the Holocaust hadn’t occurred and we didn’t have anything but suspicions that it was going to occur, and there was the problem of millions of people, and that was really dealt with, and dealt with very poorly. Mr. Roosevelt’s—one of the black marks in his record that he really didn’t do as much as he could have. But some of that came really after the war was in progress. You know, the real slaughter of the Jews didn’t occur till later, what the war, you know, the final solution and the death camps. But that was on a much higher level, that was between the president and the Jewish organizations and the state department.

Hellard:What do you—what do you—

Prichard:And—and—and I had little or nothing to do with that, except just as an observer.

Hellard:Well, what do you, what do you classify, as you said, as one of his black marks, what—what did he not do that he should’ve, or what did he do that he shouldn’t have?

Prichard:Well, there’s widespread belief that Mr. Roosevelt could have intervened more forcibly to stop the death camps. Even could of have had our bombers to bomb them. Read books that have been written on this. Mr. [Henry] Morgenthal was much involved. And this was not in my bailiwick, I, I mean, you know, I had views on it. But this is all in the public domain, and my memories are not relevant in any sense that’s really significant here. And this is not anything we had much to do with in the—in the Justice Department. But there was a much smaller operation, much more of an emergency operation. When France fell, France had been the haven of refuge traditionally through the generations for those in flight from persecution all over Europe. And you had in France, before the German occupation, you had refugees from the Spanish Civil War, you had Jews from Germany and Austria, you had refugees of all sorts—not just Jews—primarily artists, political refugees, socialists, trade unionists, activists, sculptors, you know. And the question was how do you get them out? Now they were in France and had been, many of them, for years. But when the French were occu-, France was occupied by the Germans, and the Netherlands occupied by the Germans, Neth-, the Netherlands had been a great source of refuge, too. Well, these people fled, most of them to Lisbon, some of them to Spain, but that didn’t help much ’cause the Span-, Spain was under [Franciso] Franco, great many of them fled to Lisbon, which was sort of the last, you know, open city. Now, this wasn’t a matter of thousands upon thousands of people, but of, you know, several hundred. It was certainly several thousand but—of getting out the—the—the refugees of this special character, writers, and artists, and notable political opponents of Nazism and fascism. And the Emergency Rescue Committee was organized for that specific purpose. And what you had to do was get visas for them, or get them into this country on temporary visas, which involved some little irregularity of the traditional immigration procedure, because ordinarily a visitor is admitted only if there is some assurance that he’s got some place to go when the period of his visitor’s visa expires. Our immigration laws were so strict, and immigration then was restricted and had been since back in the ’20s or early ’30s to about a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five thousand people a year, of all. And—and of course the national origins quotas meant that—which took you back to the, what, 1890 census—meant that the thing was weighted in favor of English and Germans and against the central Europeans and the Italians, because in 1890 they hadn’t all been here. Now, that made it very hard, and what we had to do was find ways to bend the law to let these people in as temporary visitors knowing well that they had no way to leave at the end of their visit. And then after they got here, let them go to Canada through a procedure we call voluntary departure—whenever a permanent place on the quota opened up, let them go to Canada and get a permanent immigration visa from an American consulate in Canada. This was really a kind of a special privilege granted to these artists, intellectuals, political refugees. And I think, you—you know, great tribute to Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt that they were very much interested in trying to do this. And Mrs. Roosevelt use to call me frequently about the problems and was a great help because the State Department was very sluggish about it, very nervous, always afraid we’d be in trouble with the politicians and the Congress, letting in radicals. And we had to set up, we were forced finally to set up a committee to pass on each one of these cases. And that was suppose to clear them for security, you know, whether they were Communists particularly.

Hellard:Uh-huh.

Prichard:And the committee had a representative of the State Department on it, and I represented the Department of Justice, and there was somebody there from the FBI, and somebody there from military intelligence, and somebody there from naval intelligence. And when the names would come up, everybody would get the dossiers out on them from the intelligence files, and there’d always be an argument about whether—whether they were security risks. And I was usually on the side of favoring the—the applicant, the refugee, and the FBI representative was usually on the side of caution. And we would often go round and round, and we’d win some and lose some, and I probably was not as tactful in that as I should have been. You know, I was too combative, in retrospect. And I think probably after a long time I probably got to the point where I didn’t have as much effectiveness on that committee as I should’ve had. Of course I was quite young, quite opinionated, and probably not as smooth and gracious as I might have been. And as I look back on it, I—I—I think I could’ve done a better job if I’d of been more diplomatic, more tactful, and more gracious. I think I was right on the merits of the cases. Of course, during this same period I was doing other things, occasionally. I worked on the opinion that was written for the president as to the legality of the exchange of destroyers for bases. You may recall that in 1940 the British were desperately anxious for forty over-age destroyers that we had, left maybe from World War I. They needed them to escort the merchant ships, protect them from German submarines. Of course, the Neutrality Act was in effect. We had no authority, they probably couldn’t pay for them anyhow, so we couldn’t have sold them, had no authority to give them to them. So Ben Cohen devised the strategy, which was that the British would trade us bases in the British dependencies in the West Indies in return for these destroyers. And Ben worked on that opinion, and I worked on it with him. And then there was a lawyer from North Carolina who was in the attorney general’s office, Judge N. A. Townsend, who worked on it. We all worked together on it. And that opinion was the basis on which the president proceeded to carry out the so-called bases-for-destroyers deal, which was the first major act by which we participated in helping the British during World War II. Now, now we’re talking about now the year roughly from June 1940 up to 1941.

Hellard:Let me ask—

Prichard:Now—

Hellard:—let me ask a few questions.

Prichard:Yeah.

Hellard:First of all in—with reference to the Emergency Rescue Committee, do you recall any famous or well known people that—that were taken in by this commission? And secondly, who set the priority on who to take in? Or how was that priority established?

Prichard:Well, the Emergency Rescue Committee established the priorities. And when they submitted the names to us, we simply cleared them for security and approved them for the so-called shortcut procedure I was talking about, of getting the visitor’s visa and coming here and getting the privilege of voluntary departure to Canada to get a permanent immigration visa. But, oh, yes I’ll tell you—Thomas, Thomas Mines’ daughter came under that, oh, I don’t know who, yes, there were a whole lot of them, I don’t know, I’d have to check them.

Hellard:I guess my—I guess my—my real question is were scientists given any kind of priority over artists, and artists—

Prichard:Not—

Hellard:—any kind of priority over musicians or—

Prichard:These were primarily musicians, artists, and political refugees. Scientists were not to the fore, we hadn’t got into, I don’t think the—the atomic energy thing had gotten that much to the foreground.

Hellard:Okay.

Prichard:I’m sure some of them were scientists, but mainly they were in what you might call the arts and the political refugees.

Hellard:Now we had at one of our meetings had talked about the Kentucky congressional delegation just in terms of who was there, and I assume that went unchanged in 1940 to ’41. But can you just tell us briefly what the attitude—I assume you—you may have come in contact with them—what the attitude of Kentucky’s congressmen and senators were toward the lend-lease, America becoming more involved?

Prichard:Oh, my—my best recollection is that on those prewar measures all the Democrats from Kentucky were on the side of the administration on these prewar measures, the draft and—and lend-lease—we haven’t gotten to lend-lease yet now—but those things, preparedness, so-called. Even though there might have been some divergence on domestic issues, I think all the Democrats tended to be on the side of the administration. And there wasn’t, I believe, but one Republican in the Kentucky delegation then. That was Mr. Robsion from what would now be the fifth district, then called the ninth. And I think he was always against isolationists.

Hellard:Was that the same John Robsion who ran for governor a number of years ago?

Prichard:No, that was his father.

Hellard:His father.

Prichard:Many years represented that district. In fact, had been a United States Senator earlier for a brief time, and been defeated by Senator Logan. But this also was the year of the presidential election, the year in which Wendell Willkie ran against President Roosevelt. And that was one of my extracurricular activities, to work in that campaign. Joe Rauh, a little older than I am but another young lawyer, I believe Joe was either in the Labor Department or the Federal Communication Commission at that time. He had been [Benjamin N.] Cardozo’s law clerk and then briefly, as I told you, was with Frankfurter. We did work, we worked on some speeches for President Roosevelt, Secretary [Harold] Ickes, and others in that campaign. And during that period, we had constant communication with Justice Frankfurter. He didn’t seem to us to have had too many inhibitions about taking a—a discreet part in political matters of that sort. He usually was sheltered by, you know, he’d communicate with us rather than directly with political people. And Phil Graham worked with us on that, too. And at that same time, you know, that’s when we began to form a little group that became friends all through our lives, some of them earlier, but there was Joe Rauh, and Phil Graham, and John Ferguson and—and four or five others. And the election of 1940 came out very satisfactorily. President won handsomely, although in the course of it he had said some things that later came back to haunt him about not sending our boys to fight abroad in a foreign war. He did say, however, except in case of attack. But the—the message that he gave at that time was that we weren’t going to get involved in a war, although he left an out.

Hellard:Did he ever, in your judgment, did he ever really think we would not be involved?

Prichard:Why no. Don’t think he ever thought it. I don’t think any of us ever thought it. I’d say from the time of the fall of France, all of our group felt that it was not only inevitable but perhaps in a sense desirable, believing that we, that there was no way the war could be won without American participation, and that there was no way that the world could be saved from the threat of Hitler’s domination without his military defeat. And now, as I said, during that year, I felt great satisfaction in the work we did on the immigration regulations and the registration of aliens, the destroyer-bases thing, and a couple of other opinions I worked on that helped in the defense thing. But I also felt that the work of this committee, this interdepartmental committee clearing these refugees, was getting awfully tedious, and the securities agencies were getting awful tough, and I was in constant sort of combat with them. And so I finally—by that time I think Justice Jackson, I’m not sure just when he was appointed, whether it was, I think it was mid-’41 though, he was appointed to the Supreme Court and Mr. Biddle became attorney general. And I went to Mr. Biddle and said this was getting to be awful unpleasant, and I wasn’t sure that I was being as effective as I ought to have been on this committee, and suggested that I might look around and see what else was available. And he was fine about it, said if you want to I’ll, you know, put you in the regular work of the solicitor general’s office arguing cases in court, or give you any assignment you’d like, or if you find something elsewhere I would, you know, just do what you want to. Well, about that time, you know, Sidney Hillman and Knudsen had come in, originally with what was called the National Defense Advisory Council, which was a group of five that was to supervise the mobilization of the economy for defense. There was Knudsen, Hillman, Leon Henderson, who was then a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and a couple of others, there was a woman on there who was suppose to be a consumer representative.

Hellard:Can you hold it just a minute? I’m going to just change this tape.

Prichard:Uh-huh.

Hellard:Testing one, two, three, four, testing, testing, testing.

Prichard:( )

Hellard:No, it’s okay I think. This is tape number seven, side two, Edward Prichard interviews. Okay, now, if you’ll continue.

Prichard:Now, another member of that advisory council was Chester Davis, who had been administrator of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration in the early part of the New Deal, and was at that time, I believe, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. And I think one of the best summaries of the activities of that commission can be obtained from Ken Galbraith’s memoirs. He was working with Chester Davis and Leon Henderson at that time, and he has a very good description of what went on in that period of the early defense mobilization. Now this was before I had any connection with it. This was while I was in the Department of Justice. But a little later, after the election, and while I was still in the Department of Justice—[interruption in tape] was reconstituted into a twin-headed agency called the OPM, Office of Production Management. And it was under the co-directorship of William Knudsen and Sidney Hillman. Sidney Hillman had been president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, one of the leading labor leaders, and a very close friend of President Roosevelt.

Hellard:Okay, we’re back on the air now so—

Prichard:Uh-huh. Yeah. You ready [gap in tape] OPM took over the direction of mobilizing the economy and the industrial machine for the defense effort. Hillman and Frankfurter had been very close through all the ’20s and ’30s. Frankfurter had advised the Amalgamated Clothing Workers in some of the labor cases that went to the courts. He had been instrumental in drafting, and was the author of the Norris-LaGuardia Act dealing with labor injunctions in the federal courts. And even as early as 1940, Frankfurter had put me in touch with Sidney Hillman, wanted us to meet. And so as I had somewhat tired of the assignment on this interdepartmental committee clearing all these refugees, I was approached by Sidney Hillman, and I expect that was at the suggestion of Frankfurter, although one never knew those things except by inference, about coming over to the OPM and serving as his attorney. And so sometime in the summer of 1941 I talked to Mr. Biddle about it, and it was agreeable to him. And I went over to the, to the OPM, which was then in one of the new office buildings. Had a whole host of people coming in, dollar-a-year men, lawyers, economists, and all the rest of it. I then met some of the people who were to be active in the mobilization of the economy, industrial mobilization for the defense effort and the war effort, and that association continued to some degree. Many of them, one was Donald Nelson, who later became head of that agency when it was changed to the War Production Board, the names changed, you know, but the functions tended to continue. Donald Nelson was there. He was in charge of what you might call procurement, purchasing. William Batt, a Philadelphia industrialist who was a manufacturer of ball bearings and a very bright man, who was head of the raw materials division.

Hellard:Do you want a relight on your cigar?

Prichard:I will in a minute. And quite a few others. The general council of the OPM, and later the War Production Board, was a very unusual lawyer who had practiced in Buffalo, New York for many years and was a great friend of Justice Frankfurter’s, later became a partner in Covington and Burley, and lived to be active in the practice of law till he was ninety-five, ninety-six years old when he finally died, John Lord O’Brian. And of course the—the whole OPM, and later War Production Board, because I stayed on when it became that and Hillman continued to be one of the chief officials in it, was a center of all kinds of activities, all kinds of controversies. Probably the greatest controversy, and the fundamental controversy, that was taking place in that, in that time was the fight over the extent to which the government’s industrial mobilization authority should be used to clamp down on the production of civilian goods in order to make those facilities and raw materials available for war production. This controversy started in, in 1940 and continued through 1941 but became acute after Pearl Harbor. There were those, some of those who came from the industrial background simply felt you could superimpose war production on the existing civilian economy and sort of make room for both. And, of course, there was always a necessity to preserve a—a sufficient civilian economy, to maintain essential goods and services. But there was a constant feeling on the part of people like Judge [Robert P.] Patterson, the Under Secretary of War—and by the way during this same period in 1940, Justice Frankfurter had played, and I had intimate knowledge of what was going on, had played a very key role in persuading President Roosevelt to change the composition of his cabinet in preparation for what was a prewar emergency and later a war emergency, particularly in getting ridding—getting rid of the ineffective secretaries of war and navy, and reinvigorating the war and navy departments. And Justice Frankfurter had a candidate for Secretary of War who emerged victorious, and that was his old boss, Henry L. Stimson, under whom he had worked when he was in the U.S. Attorney’s office right out of law school in New York and then later in the War Department, when he was with Stimson in the Bureau of Insular affairs in the Taft administration. Stimson was by this time quite elderly, but still vigorous and strong minded. And I think Frankfurter was never prouder of anything he did of an extra-judicial or extra-curricular nature than he was of having promoted Mr. Stimson and his undersecretary Robert Patterson, who came from the second circuit, U.S. Court for the second circuit, to be Under Secretary of War. At the same time, they pushed Frank Knox, who had been the vice presidential candidate with Alf Landon and was the publisher of the Chicago Daily News, to come in as Secretary of the Navy, and brought in James Forrestal as the Under Secretary, greatly strengthening the cabinet for the emergency. And so there was constant pressure from the War Department to eliminate unnecessary civilian activities in order to concentrate industrial effort for war production. And that was one of the fights that occurred inside the agency. And, of course, I was on the side of those who wanted to do that. Some of the people who had ci-, backgrounds in civilian industry were tending to resist it, including Knudsen. One of the key issues was presented by Walter Reuther, who had emerged as the most intellectually stimulating of the labor leaders of the country. And he had proposed a new system of organization to mobilize the war industries, what he called labor-management councils, in which in all the major defense industries you would set up joint labor and management groups to plan the mobilization of those industries with, of course, participation by government and consumer interests as well. And while that proposal was never fully accepted, it had a considerable impact. And Hillman and his successor, a man named [Wendell] Lund in the labor end of the War Production Board, did succeed in setting up what they called joint labor-management production councils in many plants and companies, in which labor and management cooperated very effectively to step up productivity, break down job skills so that you could upgrade less skilled labor to perform tasks in defense industries. And that was one of the things that we worked on during that period. But Reuther finally came to believe that the only way to convert the automobile industry, to—and I had a great deal of association with Reuther in those days, he was very close to Joe Rauh, close to me—that one of the great necessities was just to stop the production of civilian cars. That that was the only way, that—that once you stop producing cars then the automobile industry would have a really strong incentive to convert to the production of airplanes, and tanks, and military trucks, and all the things that the armed forces needed. Well, it took a long time to get that done. And it wasn’t until after Pearl Harbor, in the late winter or early spring of 1942, that that was finally done. And that marked a key decision in the mobilization of industry for war, which was a decision really to eliminate nonessential or less essential civilian activities and really get to a system of planned allocation of raw materials, planned mobilization of industrial facilities with the establishment of allocations and priorities.

Hellard:Well, where did the problem lie, with the consuming public or the manufacturer?

Prichard:Well, it just—

Hellard:It just took so long.

Prichard:—the problem lay just with the system as it was. I can remember Judge Patterson constantly talking about how angry it made him to walk along the street and see these trucks delivering—what is some soft drink they might have delivered?

Hellard:Coca-cola.

Prichard:Not Co-cola, that’s one of them, but it was another one.

Hellard:RC Cola?

Prichard:No, it—it wasn’t a cola.

Hellard:Dad’s Root Beer? Orange Crush?

Prichard:One of those things. But it would just drive him crazy to see trucks go along and truck drivers delivering and gasoline being used to distribute these soft drinks. And I’d say Sprite if we had Sprite then, but it’s whatever it was. It was one of those drinks like that.

Hellard:Uh-huh.

Prichard:And, you know, it’s just the fact that the system as it went was conducive to the production of the consumer goods that we’d been using in peacetime. And of course, when you mobilize for war and injected a lot of new money into the system, then the demand for these civilian goods of a nonessential nature just got greater, and it was profitable as the devil to go ahead and make soft drinks and sell them and make other things and sell them. And it was just necessary to eliminate or minimize nonessential civilian production. And eventually we stopped building houses, except around military bases or defense factories where you had to have them. We stopped building—manufacturing appliances. We stopped manu-—except in a very limited way—we stopped manufacturing automobiles. We didn’t make a single civilian automobile from sometime early in 1942 until the end of the war. And this is one of the reasons that we were able to manage to hold prices and wages in line during the war, once we got things under control, because there wasn’t anything to spend your money on, so the classic results of inflation couldn’t take place. If you didn’t produce cars, then the price of cars couldn’t go up. If you didn’t produce refrigerators, then the price of refrigerators couldn’t go up. If you didn’t produce tires, the price of tires couldn’t grow up—go up. Well that was all a set of policy decisions and controversies that went on through, particularly ’41 and early ’42, and it was a continuing argument. Another one of the great controversies that was never fully decided was whether you would go in and break down the production of complicated armaments in order—like airplane engines, and tank motors, and things like that—in order to permit the components to be manufactured by smaller businesses, so that they could play their part in the defense mobilization. And there was a controversy that went on all through that period about that, and it never was, you know, some gains were made, but we never really succeeded in—in—in breaking up the manufacture of these components by bringing in the smaller industries to make part of them and thereby relieve the strain on the facilities and make it less necessary to build big new defense plants. And there was a brilliant automotive engineer from England who came over here with a lot of suggestions like that. And I remember Joe Rauh and all of us would meet with him, his name was Alex Taub, and he was the father-in-law of Leon Shaker.

Hellard:Is that right?

Prichard:Yes sir. He was the father-in-law of Leon Shaker. And he had many brilliant ideas about how you could take the most complicated mechanisms that were necessary in the defense procurement and break them down into smaller components that could be made by smaller industries and thereby relieve the strain on the plant capacity of the major industrial plants. And we achieved some results on that, but it never, never really got going, because it was awfully hard to overcome the traditional power of the big industrial concerns to do it their way. But we did make some gains there, and some gains in stopping nonessential civilian production, and some gains in labor-management cooperation, particularly at the plant level, in upgrading productivity and simplifying job tasks to make it easier for less-skilled people to do the jobs. But probably the biggest single advance that was made in the smooth flow of war production was the Control Materials Plan, which finally, I don’t know whether that was accepted in late ’42 or early ’43, after I’d gone to the White House, but it was brewing and boiling in my time. We started out with what we call priorities. In other words, if you wanted airplanes, you put a priority on all the things that went into airplanes. And those priorities had to be filled before you could produce for less essential purposes. But priorities got to be like counterfeit money; you’d inflate your priorities. And consequently, you’d be having more double-A priorities than there was materials and components to satisfy them. So that caused the system of priorities to break down. And some of the bright people in there, particularly a man, a banker from New York named Ferdinand Eberstadt, devised what they called the Control Materials Plan, which was to start not with the priorities of the finished—for the finished product, but to start with the raw materials and components. So that every ton of steel, every pound of copper, every ton of aluminum that was made was destined for a particular use at the time of its processing. This ton of steel is going to a tank, this aluminum is going to an airplane, and that did more to straighten out the flow of raw materials.

Hellard:I only have one question to inject here. From—from which stockpile did—did the copper tubing for Happy’s swimming pool come?

Prichard:Well, that was a bootleg operation. That’s what, you know, that was the thing was about it, you see, it was really done in violation of all the rules. Now, I think that thing actually took place before the Control Materials Plan went into effect. And if you’d had the Control Materials Plan, they would’ve call it CPM or CMP, Happy’s thing couldn’t have happened. But anyway, those were some of the things that were going on in ’40 and ’41. Perhaps one other interesting phase of it that I worked on was in the area of labor relations. The question arose once the defense effort was mobilized, how do you deal with—how do you deal with wages, how do you deal with strikes, how do you deal with unions? Well, there were those that wanted to have a compulsory system all the way down the line, a labor draft, outlawing strikes. And there were those that wanted to rely purely on voluntary efforts. And so when all those controversies were coming to a head, the president convened a labor-management conference at the White House, which had all the main leaders of organized labor and the main leaders of big business. C. E. Wilson of General Motors was there; and Charlie Wilson of General Electric, president of the National Association of Manufacturers; and John L. Lewis; George Meany; Philip Murray; labor leaders. And the chairman of the conference was William H. Davis, who had been named as chairman of the National—well, it was originally called the National Defense Mediation Board then the National War Labor Board—and finally they reached—I was secretary of that conference. And that met for day after day at the White House, and they finally reached an impasse over the question of the closed shop. They agreed that there’d be a voluntary ban on strikes and lockouts, and that the labor and management would agree to accept the decisions of the National Labor—War Labor Board on a voluntary basis. But they couldn’t agree on whether the board would have jurisdiction over cases where the labor was demanding some form of union security agreement. So finally the president just squared that circle by accepting their agreement to accept the decisions of the board and not have strikes and lockouts, and that—and then he just turned over to the board the decision on what to do about union security agreements, and they finally compromised on what they called the maintenance of membership. It wouldn’t require people to join a union, but they would approve a contract or recommend a contract in which people, you know, enrolled in the union at the beginning of a contract period and had to maintain their membership as long as the contract period ran, and then if they didn’t resign at the end of the contract period, why they continued to belong and have to pay dues. And that seemed to satisfy the unions. Employees never did like it, but they lived with it. But, you see, by the time we had that conference, Pearl Harbor had taken place. As I said, I’d been working over at the OPM, War Production Board later, during ’41 and early ’42 and by that time— Incidentally, I can remember very well where I was on Pearl Harbor day. I was at the cabin, so-called, of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Meyer, Katharine Graham’s mother and father, over in Virginia. It was a Sunday. It was a luncheon. And [Maxim] Litvinov the Russian ambassador and his wife were there, and a good many other guests. And in the middle of lunch, Mr. Meyer was called to the phone and told that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. And, of course, that intensified everything; intensified efforts to mobilize. And that’s when we got the ban on production of civilian automobiles and a great many of the other things. Meanwhile, there had come to be a—a problem of inflation. In 1941, prices had begun to rise. We began to get full employment, the jobless went back to work, millions went into the army, unemployment went way down, wages began to rise, prices began to rise, food prices began to rise. And during the year late ’40 to late ’41, price level rose about 15 percent. Consequently, in ’41, price control legislation was started, a rather narrow, what we called selective price controls, dealing with the strategic industries and strategic prices. Well, this had a partial effect, but it still didn’t stop the rise in prices, and we continually had—had this problem of inflation. The War Labor Board had devised what they called the Little Steel Formula of limiting all wage increases to 15 percent from the level of wages, hourly wages prevailing in—in late 1940, and then freezing them, subject to some adjustments. But there continued to be rising prices, so in 1942 when I was still working at the War Production Board, still working on these problems—Hillman had gotten sick and had to retire and didn’t live but a couple of years longer, two or three years longer—it became necessary to do something drastic about prices and wages. So the first thing that was done in ’42 was to insti-—begin to institute rationing, on the theory that the best way to restrict demand and hold prices down was to control consumption of the product. And that gradually began. We had a shortage of rubber, so tires were rationed. Gasoline was rationed, not to save gasoline, but to save rubber. And gradually, other forms of rationing were instituted. Meat was rationed, clothing was rationed, canned goods were rationed, butter was rationed, sugar was rationed, coffee was rationed, most consumer goods were rationed. And the OPA [Office of Price Administration] was established to control prices and rationing. But even that was considered to be inadequate because you still had no control over wages, and no adequate control over farm prices, which was sort of exempt from the original price control. So in September 1942, Congress passed the Economic Stabilization Law, which in effect said the president shall issue an order stabilizing all wages and prices at the level prevailing on September 1, 1942, with such exceptions as being necessary to correct gross inequities and to promote the prosecution of the war. Well, that was a new economic policy. And at that time, in order coordinate the domestic front, the president called Justice James Burns from the Sup-—to resign from the Supreme Court and come to the White House as the director of Economic Stabilization. He was a friend of Justice Frankfurter’s and I had begun to know him in ’40 and ’41. And so he decided, they decided to set up a little unit in the east wing of the White House, or west wing excuse me, of the White House, that would deal with the inflation, economic stabilization, rationing, price control, all those things. Sort of a domestic cabinet. And it was then that I went to the White House, in September 1942.

Hellard:Okay, can we stop there?

Prichard:Uh-huh.

Hellard:And let me ask a few questions and we’ll pick up with September 1942 the next interview.

Prichard:Uh-huh

Hellard:Did you ever have any contact with Jim Farley?

Prichard:Oh yeah.

Hellard:What—what was he like? Do you have any recollections of him?

Prichard:Oh yes, I—I got to know him. You know, he was very—once you met him you always knew him and he knew you. He had one of those phenomenal memories for names and faces and would always call you by your nickname as if he’d known you all your life. I guess I met Jim Farley probably in ’39 or ’40. I never was intimate with him because, you know, by the time I got to know him he was—his relationships with President Roose-—Roosevelt were cooling off. He was running his race for president in 1940, which was not very successful, and he was leaving the national administration. He was still chairman of the National Committee, although he resigned in 1940 and was succeeded by Ed Flynn. But he was, you know, Farley was a tall, methodical, sober, gregarious in his way though not light hearted, rather serious in his mien, had a rather solemn face, much a detail man. I think pretty honest. Not a dynamic or romantic figure. I never knew him intimately, but I, you know, would see him often, and he was always very—very agreeable very pleasant, great admirer of Senator [Alben] Barkley.

Hellard:Next question. Do you think the president pretty mu-—president’s administration knew of—the attack was coming on Pearl Harbor? Did we have any—did we have more information? You know it seems to be a continuing battle—

Prichard:Oh, it seems to me that Mr. Roosevelt unquestionably knew that the Japanese were going to attack us somewhere. I don’t think he had any idea it would be at Pearl Harbor. I think he—he was—no question but what they were anticipating some Japanese action, but they thought it was going to be directed toward the Dutch East Indies, I think.

Hellard:Did—did President Roosevelt order the—the, oh, shadowing or investigation of Japanese-Americans before Pearl Harbor?

Prichard:You mean the internment?

Hellard:Well, not the internment, but the—the surveillance of the Japanese-Americans.

Prichard:I don’t know. I don’t know how much surveillance there was before Pearl Harbor. I mean I’m sure there was some intelligence gathering. But if you mean by surveillance some really detailed surveillance, I’m not sure that there was that much. The truth is that the Japanese-Americans had a damn raw deal. Most of them were loyal. They formed brigades and divisions. They fought heroically in the war. There’s very little evidence that the—that the Nisei were disloyal to this country.

Hellard:Okay. And the last question I have here is what about Alan Cranston? Would he make a good president?

Prichard:Oh, I don’t know that he would make a real bad president, but I think his age is somewhat a factor against him. He’s just a little younger than Ronald Reagan. I—I think he’s a darn good senator, but I don’t know what kind of a president he’d make.

Hellard:Do you have any recollection of he and his wife back when they were heading the committee—

Prichard:Oh, I remember them very well. She had long hair and was very deeply involved in this work and so was he. And they were two eager, very dedicated active young people working very hard in a good cause. Energetic—

Hellard:Okay, I—

Prichard:—very effective.

Hellard:—I assume Phil Graham left Judge Frankfurter in June—around June of ’41, is that correct?

Prichard:Uh-huh.

Hellard:And then what—where did he go from there?

Prichard:Well— Oh by the way, there was a little interim there in ’41 when I worked somewhere else. Phil Graham and Joe Rauh and I all worked together in a little organization that existed for a while, before all these agencies were fully established, called the Office of Emergency Management, when we were trying to get these various bureaus and organizations set up. And we were particularly working on lend-lease, trying to get a flow of supplies to the British and other allies. And we worked there with a fellow named Wayne Coy who came from Indiana with [Paul V.] McNutt, when McNutt came to Washington as head of the what would now be called the Hu-—or the Health and Human Services. And Wayne Coy was one of the finest public servants I ever knew. He was later deputy director of the Budget Bureau, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, went into the TV business and died at a fairly age, came from Indiana. And we had a little—a little group over there for a few months in that office of Emergency Management. It was Phil Graham; Joe Rauh; a boy named Frank Kauffman, who was later a federal judge in Baltimore, still is I think; John Ferguson; several others of us that were close friends, and that was just a few months there in—in late ’41, early ’42, I guess, that—wait a minute, was that before I went to the—to the OPM or after? That was before I went to the OPM. That was after the Department of Justice and before I went to the OPM. I was just over there about three months or four months.

Hellard:So did Mr. Graham stay on there after you left?

Prichard:Yeah. And then he went into military intelligence, and was with that during the whole war, mostly on foreign assignment working under Assistant Secretary of War [John J.] McCloy.

Hellard:I guess that’s it then. It’s two o’clock.

Prichard:Okay.