Man of Steel

(See Cover)

A black Cadillac picked a path out of the traffic along Manhattan's Central Park South one afternoon last week and glided to the curb before the plush and towering Hampshire House overlooking the grass, trees and lake in lower Central Park. From the back seat edged the car's solitary passenger, a handsome, meaty man with wavy silver hair. He was dressed in a businesslike grey summer suit, red and white striped bowtie and soft black loafers. Stepping to the pavement, he turned slightly, tossed the driver of the rented limousine a "Thank you, James." Then David John McDonald, 53, president of the United Steelworkers of America, strode confidently past the smiling doorman, through the revolving door of the elegant apartment hotel.

Puffing a cigar instead of his customary burnished brown pipe, Dave McDonald marched into the elevator, rode 20 floors to his three-room, $65-a-day suite. He changed into tailored lounging clothes, considered which of two books -Auntie Mame or a condensed edition of Toynbee -to pick up for relaxation. Another bargaining session between the steelworkers' union and the country's three largest steel companies had ended a few minutes before. McDonald, who had been leading the union delegates at the sessions in the Hotel Roosevelt, was anxious to be away from the stress and the press to sit back and relax.

Access to Ike. The cost of a rented Cadillac in New York City or the daily bill for the apartment suite overlooking Central Park was of no more concern to McDonald than it would be to the steel executives he had recently left. The steelworkers' union, with 1,200,000 members spread across the U.S., each paying $3 in monthly dues, has like other unions moved into the realm of big business itself. Since the U.S.W. is one of the most highly centralized major labor organizations in the U.S., its $40,000-a-year president wields more authority than, for example, the $242,367-a-year president of mighty United States Steel Corp. Far more readily than most businessmen, he has access to the White House; once, during the shortlived "recession" of 1954, almost persuaded President Eisenhower to take off on a major Government spending program.

Dave McDonald lives his businessman's role right to the tips of his grimeless fingers. He surrounds himself with a hardworking staff of economists, statisticians, and public-relations men. He has been glamorized in an inspired and gushing biography. A onetime amateur actor, he sometimes rolls off pronouncements with more than a touch of ham. He regularly buys part of his vast wardrobe from Manhattan's Ivy-Leaguish Brooks Brothers

("Why not? They're union made."). He likes classical music the hi-fi way, seeks out exotic jazz dives when he gets a chance, lunches periodically at Pittsburgh's tony Duquesne Club. Three years ago he was honored by the biggest names of Pittsburgh on Dave McDonald Day. At home he works for the local Community Chest, the Rosalia Foundling & Maternity Hospital, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Parents' Athletic Council of Mount Lebanon. He is a member of the Government's Export-Import Bank advisory committee, and was a member of the Randall Commission, which surveyed foreign economic policy.

Abandoned Cliches. Many a battle-scarred unionist snorts at Dave McDonald's airs and the fact that, never baring his chest to the furnaces, he came to the Steelworkers' presidency on the white-collar route. Yet McDonald is, in fact, far more in tune with his times than his classconscious critics. In the phenomenal growth of the competitive U.S. economy over the past four years, most of the old labor-management cliches have gone out the window. Labor and management still argue and labor still strikes, but enlightened leaders on both sides know more specifically than ever before that they have a mutual stake in the general economy. Moreover, the economy is strong enough to stand a strike -even in steeland with Government playing it strictly hands off, both sides must coldly face the results of a strike on profits and incomes. The pressures are new and different. Industry must keep up its earnings or lose new investment capital. As for labor, a TIME correspondent reported from Gary, Ind. last week: "Not many of the men have been hungry for years. Most of them are up to their ears in installment debt. They don't really want a strike."

Philip Murray, McDonald's predecessor as the Steelworkers' president, always geared his thinking to the inevitable strike, as a Washington labor specialist points out, but McDonald always thinks ahead to the inevitable settlement. Emphasizing the mutual trusteeship of labor and management. McDonald persuaded negotiators to sit around the table to discuss this year's contract -instead of across the table from each other. Then he suggested that the table be taken away altogether so they could just sit around. Even on the eve of the strike, the worst thunderbolt that McDonald could think of to hurl at Big Steel management was "These people are still thinking in terms of the '30s. The backward look returns to the steel industry."

The Lace Curtain. On Nov. 22, 1902, the night David McDonald was born in Pittsburgh's Hazelwood section, his father was walking a picket line as a member of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers. David McDonald Sr. had been a union man since he arrived in the U.S. from Wales, was hustled out of Springfield, Ill. for union activity there. Dave's mother, Mary Kelly McDonald, was the daughter of an officer of the Sons of Vulcan, an early union for iron craftsmen. Both her brothers were union men. After a brief, unsuccessful interlude of trying to run a saloon on the south side of the Monongahela River, the elder McDonald finally went into the Jones & Laughlin rolling mill as a guide setter. One day in 1915 a piece of hot steel sliding through the rollers sheared off accidentally. A hot, jagged end whipped through his left leg, put him in bed for ten months. When he walked again it was with a bad limp. In healing, the injured leg was shortened.

Workmen's compensation laws had not yet been passed in Pennsylvania. With McDonald's wages halted, the family looked for means of support. Mary McDonald took in washing and baked bread. David and his younger brother Joseph delivered papers. No matter how low their funds got, Mary McDonald insisted they remember one thing: they were lace-curtain Irish, not shanty Irish. Accordingly, she sent the boys off to St. Stephen's parochial school to get all the education they could. Their clothes were patched but clean. At St. Stephen's, David was a top student in his class. He sang soprano in the boys' choir, tried to master the violin but admitted defeat. After parochial school he went to Holy Cross High School for a two-year commercial course, walked the three miles between home and school to save carfare.

David was burning with enterprise when he left Holy Cross in 1918 and got his first job as a clerk in the Jones & Laughlin polishing mill. The work paid 22-c- an hour; he soon found another job where the hourly rate was 36-c-. When an opportunity arose to become a machinist's helper at the mill, he took it. Then in 1922 he returned to white-collar work as typist-switchboard operator at $80 a month for Wheeling Steel Products Co. Three nights a week, for three hours a night, he went to Duquesne University to study accounting.

"Who Is Phil Murray?" The course of his life was turned by a street-corner meeting. One evening in September 1923, when he was lounging outside a drugstore, a friend, Mark Stanton, sauntered up. Stanton remarked he had just turned down a promising job as secretary to a young labor leader named Phil Murray. Asked McDonald: "Who is Phil Murray?" Even when he found out, he was more taken by the salary -$225 a month, three times his current earnings. Through a friend who knew Murray, David set up a job interview, hurried home to brush up on his shorthand. His mother read articles out of a newspaper; David, sitting beside her in the parlor, took them down.

After a few days of practice, young Dave set out for the Columbia Bank Building, found the office of the United Mine Workers, introduced himself to Vice President Murray. Murray was impressed by the youth's speed on the typewriter. A Roman Catholic himself, Murray was equally impressed when McDonald told him he had organized the Holy Cross High School Alumni Association, was busy organizing the Pittsburgh Catholic Alumni Association. McDonald was hired. Two days later he reported for work, found himself with Murray on a train headed for a New York conference of mine union officials. In a hotel lobby, he was led up to be introduced to the president of the union, John L. Lewis.

Two Loves. Between Murray and McDonald a father-son relationship grew up. To McDonald Murray was always "Mr. Murray," and to Murray his young protege was always "David." They went together to baseball games and horse races, traveled about the country on union business. But for McDonald the thrill of travel and important people was dulled by a conflict of interests. As an actor in church plays, he had been bitten by the theatrical bug, longed to take a fling at more serious acting. He enrolled at Carnegie Tech's drama school, studied esthetic and folk dancing, rehearsal and performance. He played the lead or directed a long series of plays in the university's workshop. He even wrote two one-act plays himself, both very gloomy. Through Frank J. Harris, who operated Warner Brothers' theaters in Pittsburgh, he was invited to Hollywood to discuss a job as an assistant movie director. McDonald never mentioned the offer to Murray, says he never seriously considered it. "But for a while I was torn between two loves -the union and the theater."

The need to make a choice came quickly. Franklin Roosevelt went into the White House; labor got the New Deal's green light. In June 1936, brush-browed John L. Lewis named Murray to head the S.W.O.C. -the Steel Workers' Organizing Committee. McDonald was made secretary-treasurer at $5,000 a year. Oral Garrison, who was Lewis' secretary at the time and a good friend of McDonald, remembers that McDonald was selected be cause "they wanted someone to handle the money. McDonald had made a great many, friends. He was able and experienced. He was the logical man for the job." McDonald and Murray rented an office in Pittsburgh and started their separate assignments. McDonald's was administrative. He assembled a staff, banked and paid out the money, established firm (if authoritarian) financial controls that have since won the Steelworkers a reputation as an honest union touched by no whisper of corruption. Best of all, he had a ringside seat for one of the most dramatic chapters of U.S. labor history.

"You'll Be President." On March 2, 1937, S.W.O.C. cracked the steel industry by signing a contract with the mightiest company of all, U.S. Steel. In the agreement were union recognition and a 10-c- hourly raise. Memberships rolled in; contracts with other steelmakers piled up. On May 19, 1942, at a convention in Cleveland, Murray proclaimed the establishment of the full-fledged United Steelworkers of America. McDonald was elected secretary-treasurer.

As Murray assumed the added role of C.I.O. president, succeeding Lewis, McDonald took on more and more of Murray's responsibilities in steel. As the years rolled on, Murray's health began to fail. He became snappish, frequently lashed out at Dave McDonald. Once, after Murray was stricken with acute pancreatitis while attending a banquet at Youngstown, McDonald wired members of the union's executive board notifying them of Murray's condition and putting them on stand-by basis. The ailing Murray heard about it, summoned McDonald to his office, told him: "I'm running this union and I don't need any goddamn office boy telling me how to do it."

He forced an amendment in the union constitution curbing McDonald's powers. But that was as far as Phil Murray would go. One day he remarked with melancholy to McDonald: "Don't worry. You know damn well you'll be president when I'm gone." In 1952, when Murray died suddenly on the West Coast, the mandate was carried out. After 30 years' preparation for the role, David McDonald became, without opposition, second president of the United Steelworkers of America. In one respect, it was an unenviable assignment. McDonald was moving into the chair of one of labor's most beloved men. Every move he made, every decision, would be gauged against the lustrous record of his predecessor.

First Mistake. McDonald made one early slip, but it taught him a lesson. Negotiating a contract for striking workers at Alco Products, Inc., he and Alco's President Perry Egbert agreed on terms that McDonald's membership later refused to accept. Said a mediator who had followed the incident: "We frankly doubted after that experience whether McDonald would ever be able to negotiate successfully with the more sophisticated Big Steel people. But he evidently learned the important lesson that he had to be prepared when he sat down with management."

Today, after four years at the job, McDonald has gained management's respect. He has even won over many of the old-line Steelworkers who resented his qualifications for the post. A top official of a steel company who has watched McDonald develop believes that he "has a good understanding -I won't say of economics -but of what makes things tick." A union official says, "Dave is less of a mixer with the rank and file but he takes a dynamic approach to everything." One reason why McDonald knows what ticks is that he is ably seconded by wise, trusted and experienced Lawyer Arthur Goldberg, Economist Otis Brubaker and the union's longtime public-relations chief, Vincent Sweeney.

Trouble at Home. McDonald's full-time fascination with his job had a serious effect on his home life. On Aug. 4, 1937, he married Emily Lou Price, a Cleveland socialite who had become John L. Lewis' secretary. Nine years later she sued for divorce. "He was a dedicated union man," she recently explained. "I wasn't grown up enough to adjust to his life; I wanted to build a home. When he put the union ahead of me, I was wounded." They had one child, David Jr., now 17. When in 1950 McDonald married his secretary, Rosemary McHugh, his first wife was willing that young David should live with them. "I wanted him to be with his dad more and to be the same kind of man," she explained.

Today the McDonalds live in a seven-room, three-bath fieldstone house in Mt. Lebanon, eight miles south of the Golden Triangle. They live unpretentiously, do little formal entertaining. But informal callers, mostly union men, are constant. At his office, McDonald exercises a prodigious memory, is a stickler for detail. His office furniture includes a dial-studded electric massage chair into which he sinks to be vibrated when he gets fatigued. His staff boasts that he "can work 35 men to exhaustion, but he irritates union wives by insisting that aides stay at home Sundays to be on call if he needs them. He needs them frequently; e.g., the high-powered union staff spends nearly a year preparing contract demands before negotiations begin.

Hopes for Coal. Dave McDonald's proudest achievement since becoming president is knocking the wage differential from the contracts of southern Steelworkers, who since 1953 have been getting the same pay as northern workers. Another sizable achievement is that, behind the scenes, he had much to do with arranging the tricky merger of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. last year. Ahead he has two strong ambitions, 1) to be invited to address the United Mine Workers, and 2) to bring John L. Lewis back to the newly united house of labor.

McDonald has small regard for the auto workers' Walter Reuther, once described him privately as "that redheaded, socialistic s.o.b." But he has become a good friend and admirer of George Meany, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. He has no designs on Meany's job, wants only to run his own union according to his own ideas. Even his critics agree that in the years ahead he will run it substantially as 1,200,000 Steelworkers want it run. And probably, in these changing times, better than it has ever been run before.

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