Posts with the tag: Prohibition

The Archivist’s Nook: Patrick Henry Callahan – Crusading Catholic Businessman

Posted on by William J. Shepherd

Patrick Henry Callahan was a model businessman, political activist, stubborn Prohibitionist, and tireless Catholic apologist of the Progressive and New Deal era. He hobnobbed with the rich and powerful, including celebrated evangelist Billy Sunday (1862-1935), acerbic journalist H. L. Mencken, and populist orator and progressive politician William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925). Nevertheless, Callahan was also a friend of the working class and co-author, along with Msgr. John A. Ryan of Catholic University, of an innovative and successfully implemented profit sharing plan between management and labor in the varnish industry, specifically The Louisville Varnish Company.

Patrick Henry Callahan (1866-1940), ‘The Colonel.’ A standard portrait often used in print, ca. 1930s. Courtesy of the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Born in October 1866 in Cleveland, Ohio, Callahan was educated in parochial schools and the Spencerian Business College. After a short-lived career as a professional baseball player for the Chicago White Stockings, where he was friends with fellow player Billy Sunday, Callahan became a salesman at the Glidden Varnish Company in Cleveland. In 1891, he married Julia Laure Cahill and they moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where he managed the Louisville Varnish Company, becoming president in 1908. Four years later, Callahan and Ryan produced their 50-50 profit sharing plan between capital and labor for Callahan’s plant, including a living wage for the latter. The plan’s success became widely known and Callahan implemented other pro labor measures such as interest earning saving accounts for employees to purchase homes and autos or use for retirement and medical expenses.[1] Callahan and Ryan continued to be friends even though they clashed over Callahan’s strong support for Prohibition.

The Callahan Correspondence from August 2, 1926, addressed to Luther Martin of New York City commenting on his personal reasons favoring prohibition of alcohol. Patrick Joseph Callahan Papers, The Catholic University of America.

Callahan participated in industrial conferences and spoke out against child labor. During the First World War he was an organizer of the National Catholic War Council and chairman of the Knights of Columbus Committee on Religious Prejudice and the Knights Committee on War. Additionally, President Woodrow Wilson offered him a position on the Federal Tariff Commission, though Callahan declined due to his already overburdened schedule. He was also involved with the postwar successor of the National Catholic War Council, the National Catholic Welfare Council/Conference, especially as vice president of the Social Action Department’s Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems, as well as vice president of the National Conference of Catholic Charities (now Catholic Charities USA), chairman of the organizing committee of the Catholic Association for International Peace and an organizer of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

Callahan also mimeographed and did mass mailing of portions of his personal correspondence, dubbed the ‘Callahan Correspondence,’ to his employees, newspaper editors, friends, and Catholics though out the country. Awarded the honorary title of ‘Colonel’ by Kentucky Governor James B. McCreary, Callahan used his correspondence to comment on national affairs, especially regarding Catholics and prohibitionists. From his association with William Jennings Bryan, his vehement opposition to the Democratic nomination of New York governor Alfred E. Smith for President, and his staunch support of Prohibition, Callahan publicized and was nationally known for his opinions that were often controversial to his fellow Catholics. He summed up his political philosophy as “the country would be much better off if we go down in defeat fighting for a fine principle than the mere winning of an election which of course is rank heresy to some people.”[2]

Callahan’s published account of the 1928 election, 1929. Patrick Joseph Callahan Papers, The Catholic University of America.

A supporter of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Callahan worked to get him elected and was a key liaison between the FDR administration and both Catholics and businessmen. His opposition to firebrand radio priest Father Charles Coughlin, whom he called “virulent”[3] and backing of Ambassador Josephus Daniels (a Methodist) in Mexico brought Callahan criticism from fellow Catholics but gratitude from FDR’s White House. In return, Callahan publicly endorsed many of New Deal programs. Though nominated for national posts in the Public Works Administration and on labor administration panels, Callahan preferred to work locally, serving as a member of the Advisory Committee of the Loan Agency for the Louisville Office of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and of the National Labor Relations Board for Kentucky.

Photograph of Callahan’s good friend, Msgr. John A. Ryan of Catholic University, along with U.S. Supreme Court justices Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, and James C. McReynolds at a Testimonial Dinner in honor of Ryan’s seventieth birthday, May 25, 1939. John A. Ryan Papers, The Catholic University of America. See Callahan’s description of the dinner in a letter to Rev. Maurice Sheehy of Catholic University.

After two decades of the ‘Callahan Correspondence’ and even more years of public service, ‘The Colonel,’ also known to his workers as ‘The Boss,’ died on February 4, 1940. He was buried in the Archdiocese of Louisville’s Calvary Cemetery. Among his most prestigious awards were his appointment by Pope Pius XI in 1922 as a Knight of the Order of St Gregory the Great and Newman Foundation’s Memorial Award in 1931. His archival papers along with those of his friend Msgr. John A. Ryan, the National Catholic War Council, and the NCWC Social Action Department, are all housed in the Archives of The Catholic University of America in Washington, D. C.

[1] Callahan to R. W. McGrath, undated, CUA-PJC Papers, Box 2, Folder 24.

[2] Callahan to W.W. Durban, October 8, 1927, CUA-PJC Papers, Box 1, Folder 2.

[3] William E. Ellis. Patrick Henry Callahan. Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter: The Edward Mellen Press, 1989, pp. 12-14.

The Archivist’s Nook: Read All About It – From Crime Reporter to Labor Advocate

Posted on by Shane MacDonald
Havana, Cuba, 1930: Harry Cyril Read (bottom right), Al Capone (back, second to right) Following an illness, Read had been ordered to spend several weeks in a warm climate by his doctor. When Capone learned of this, he invited himself along.

“Capone turned to me. His eyes were twinkling but some of their warmth was gone. ‘Is this a newspaper interview?’ he asked….He fell silent for a moment and then grinned broadly. “[Chicago City Sealer] Serritella says you’re one hundred percent and besides I like that Popeye comic in your newspaper. What do you want to know?’”

So recounts Harry Cyril Read of his first “interview” with gangster Al Capone, as reported in his unpublished manuscript Capone as I Knew Him. The time was 1929, Chicago was rocked by violence resulting from competition in the illegal liquor trade flourishing during Prohibition. It was mere weeks away from the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, a fact not lost on Read when he would reflect on this initial meeting. Read, editor of one of the two leading newspapers of Chicago – the Chicago American – had decided to use his contacts to get the inside scoop on the man at the center of the escalating violence. His contacts came through.

Caption reads: “Three hoodlums with guns invaded a downtown Chicago garage on the night of Jan. 31, 1939, terrorized an attendant, cut the telephone wires and stole the American Newspaper Guild sound truck that had been publicizing the Hearst strike. They drove the truck into the river. The next morning coast guardsmen raised it with grappling hooks from twenty feet of water. (Photo by a striking Hearst photographer).”

Harry Cyril Read was born in Chicago in 1892. Beginning with a job reporting for the Cheyenne Leader in Wyoming in 1912, Read’s career as a journalist would span three decades. While he would return to his hometown not long after 1912, the rest of the decade saw him set out on a variety of non-journalistic endeavors. In the intervening years, he would work a variety of industrial jobs, serve in the US Army in the First World War as a Sergeant Major of the 346th Tank Battalion, establish an advertising partnership, and earn a business degree from Northwestern University. In 1921, Read began working as a reporter for the Chicago American, one of two daily Chicago newspapers owned by William Hearst. An intrepid reporter, Read worked his way up the editor post of the newspaper by 1926, coinciding with the bloodiest period of the Prohibition-fueled gang wars in the Windy City. An aggressive newsman who sought to get to the bottom of the bloodshed, Read’s papers highlight numerous hours spent figuring out the politics, personalities, and patterns involved in the underworld. He collected fingerprint records, plotted gang crimes on a map, and plumbed the depths of his contacts for leads. An enterprising investigator, Read would even forge a tense, but cordial relationship with the infamous Al Capone in order to plumb the depths of the ongoing violence and political corruption rocking Chicago. At one point, Read would even go so far as to travel with the bootlegger to Florida and Cuba to maintain a working relationship and in search of a promised scoop. Along the way, he was able to provide details of Capone’s views and actions to the press.

With Capone’s arrest and sentencing for tax evasion in 1931 and the end of Prohibition not long after, the violence in Chicago began to ebb. Read continued to work as a reporter, but became increasingly involved in the labor struggles of the Great Depression. By the 1930s, the Congress of Industrial Organizations and its affiliate, the American Newspaper Guild, had organized Local 71, the Chicago Newspaper Guild. After layoffs in both of the Hearst-owned Chicago newspapers, the Guild called for a strike that began on December 4, 1938. As a leading member, Read was included in a suit filed by the Hearst papers to restrain strike activity in early 1939. The strike would not end until 1940. Despite the end of the strike, Read did not return to his former job, but instead began writing for several labor-affiliated newspapers including the United Auto Worker, the Wage Earner, and as editor of the Michigan CIO News.

Read (back row, second to left) meeting with President Dwight Eisenhower as a member of the President’s Committee for Traffic Safety, 1957.

In 1945, Read relocated to Washington, DC to accept a position as Assistant to the Secretary-Treasurer of the CIO. It is a position that he would continue to serve in for the rest of his working life, even transitioning with the merger of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and CIO in 1955. In his this capacity, Read represented the CIO at the United Nations Conference for International Organization in 1948 and at the World Federation of Trade Unions in Rome in 1948. While in Rome, Pope Pius XII received him in private audience. In light of his labor advocacy, Read served as a member of the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists, the Catholic Economic Association, the Catholic Labor Alliance, and the Catholic Inter-racial Council of Washington, DC. Furthermore, his later years were spent working on several books on politics, his experiences, and social commentary. He was also active on health and safety committees in Washington, D.C. being recognized posthumously by the National Safety Council. He passed away in 1957.

His wife, Lucy Read, donated the Harry Cyril Read Papers in 1958. They highlight the life and career of this enterprising journalist, labor and safety advocate, and author.