Title: Harold R. Christoffel Papers
Inclusive Dates: circa 1937-1990 (bulk 1946-1950)

Creator:

• Christoffel, Harold R. 1912-1991

Call Number: Mss 1046; VDA 001

Quantity: 7.2 cubic feet (9 archives boxes and 9 flat boxes) and 1 DVD

Repository:

Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Library, Archives, and Museum Collections

Archival Locations:

Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)

COLLECTION MAY BE STORED OFF-SITE: see catalog entry to request materials and for additional information.

Abstract:

Papers, mainly 1946-1950, of Harold R. Christoffel, first president of the United Automobile Workers, Local 248 at Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company in West Allis, Wisconsin, from 1937 to 1945. The collection includes early Local 248 union materials, including a history of the union to 1946 written by Christoffel, grievances and rulings, and scrapbooks of newspaper clippings documenting the major Local 248 strikes against Allis-Chalmers in 1941 and 1946-1947. Christoffel was indicted for and eventually convicted of perjury after stating in front of the House Education and Labor Committee that he was not a Communist in hearings conducted to investigate the Local 248 strike of 1946-1947. The major focus of the collection centers on the activities of the Harold Christoffel Defense Committee, formed to garner support and funding for Christoffel's defense against perjury charges. These papers include correspondence, donation receipts, testimonies and statements from prosecution and defense witnesses, and newspaper clippings documenting the trial. Significant members of the House Education and Labor Committee include freshmen representatives John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon. The collection also includes personal papers from Christoffel's time in the army and in prison, as well as biographical and research material. The documents consist primarily of subject files, correspondence, scrapbooks, and newspaper clippings.

Language: English

URL to cite for this finding aid: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mss01046

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Harold Roland Christoffel was born August 22, 1912, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the youngest of seven children of Swiss parents. Christoffel went to both public and Lutheran schools, including a year and a half in the electrical course at the Boys' Technical High School in Milwaukee. After his father's death, Christoffel left high school at the age of 14 to help support the family. From 1928 to 1935 he supplemented his education with evening courses from the Milwaukee Vocational School, including a six-year course in electrical engineering.

After working various short-term jobs for two years, Christoffel started an electrical apprenticeship at the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company in West Allis, Wisconsin, in April 1929. The apprenticeship lasted six years, after which time Christoffel worked as a journeyman in various sections of the electrical test floor.

While at Allis-Chalmers, Christoffel became involved in the Young Peoples' Socialist League and in 1934 he was a member of the Socialist Party. During that year he began his union activities at Allis-Chalmers, acting as a representative of electrical workers in the company-sponsored Works Council, as well as helping to organize the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 663, in which he held the office of Financial Secretary. In 1936 and early 1937 he became president of the Allis-Chalmers Federal Union, American Federation of Labor (AFL). That union affiliated with the United Automobile Workers, Council of Industrial Organizations (UAW-CIO), becoming Local 248 on March 14, 1937. Christoffel continued to serve as union president until 1945, at which time he was called into the Armed Services.

Prior to 1937, there had been no plant-wide union at the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company. Electrical workers, moulders, machinists, powerhouse workers, and other specialized groups were at one time or another organized by AFL craft unions. None of these groups was able to maintain union status for any meaningful period of time. The moulders and the machinists each went on strike, in 1906 and in 1916 respectively, but both were shut down by Allis-Chalmers officials, the men ordered back to work, and the unions dissolved. Other craft unions were weakened through Allis-Chalmers' policy of transferring workers between departments; because of this policy none of the small groups could maintain their member base. From 1933 to 1935 various craft unions again attempted to organize workers, but it soon became apparent that craft unions could not survive in an increasingly industrialized plant. In 1935 the craft union membership was amalgamated in the AFL federal union, a movement of which Harold Christoffel, then 22 years old, was leader.

Allis-Chalmers endured two strikes by Local 248 before Christoffel was drafted into the Army. The first, in 1939, centered on demands for a joint agreement for the three Allis-Chalmers plants, union security, vacations with pay, seniority, a workable grievance structure, and wage increases. When the company refused to meet union demands, workers staged a walkout in May of 1939. In retaliation, Allis-Chalmers fired five union leaders and refused to negotiate. The plant was closed for a month, during which time no further negotiations were made. The workers officially went on strike on June 17 and won their contract demands two days later, and the discharged union leaders were reinstated.

The second strike occurred in January of 1941, when it was discovered that two leading union disruptors who had been discharged by Allis-Chalmers were in fact paid for their anti-union activities. When faced with the demand that the company end its anti-union activities, company officials remained silent on the issue, so the workers went on strike January 22. Repeated attempts at negotiations were rebuffed by Allis-Chalmers, who ran a national smear campaign against the union and red-baited union leaders. The strike culminated in riots on March 31 and April 1 as police and sheriff's deputies fired tear gas and trained fire hoses on demonstrating picketers. Wisconsin Governor Julius Heil deemed the situation “out of hand” and ordered the plant closed. By April 8, union members had ratified a contract that won a union security clause and the right to appeal grievances to a referee. With union security firmly in place after three years of struggle, there were no work stoppages or strikes between 1941 and 1946.

Christoffel served in the Army from February 6, 1945 until October 26, 1946, spending the bulk of his time in the Pacific Theatre. He received an honorable discharge and returned to Milwaukee to resume his union duties at Allis-Chalmers. He was given the title of Honorary President and became Chairman of the Bargaining Committee of Local 248, which was then in the midst of a 329-day strike.

On April 30, 1946, Allis-Chalmers workers had voted to strike in response to Allis-Chalmers' unwillingness to negotiate a new contract. With post-war profits and tax breaks at an all-time high and defense production no longer a priority, the company was able to focus its resources on breaking Local 248. Throughout the strike, Allis-Chalmers and the press vigorously attacked Local 248 with claims of pro-Communist leanings and dealings. In October violence again broke out, but by the beginning of January 1947 the resolve of the striking workers was beginning to wane. The press charges of Communism, the failure of union supporters in recent elections, and internal UAW divisiveness weakened the workers in their struggle for higher wages, grievance resolution, and union security.

In February and March of 1947, the Milwaukee drama moved to the national stage. Three congressional committees, the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee, the House Education and Labor Committee (HELC), and the House Un-American Activities Committee heard testimony and investigated the Allis-Chalmers strike and Local 248. Two freshmen congressmen, John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, sat on the HELC and interrogated union leaders about their alleged Communist activities. During a three-day foray into Milwaukee to uncover Communists, the HELC questioned Local 248 opposition leaders who identified Harold Christoffel as a Communist. Later the committee heard testimony from Louis Budenz, the former editor of the Daily Worker, who told the committee he knew Christoffel quite well and recalled seeing him at several Party meetings. The day after Budenz's testimony, Christoffel was fired. Shortly after returning to Washington, the HELC, acting on the recommendation of Representative Kennedy, asked the Department of Justice to indict Christoffel for perjury, for stating that he was not a member of the Communist Party when questioned by the committee.

Local 248, with contributions from other unions around the country, funded Harold Christoffel's defense all the way to the Supreme Court. Christoffel was indicted for perjury, convicted, and sentenced to two to six years in prison in 1948, but the conviction was reversed in 1949 by the Supreme Court. Christoffel claimed that his conviction was based on a statement made in front of the HELC in which a quorum of congressmen was not present; the Supreme Court agreed and overturned the conviction. Representative Kennedy lashed out against the ruling; as a result the case was retried and Christoffel was again convicted. Thus Harold Christoffel became the first union leader jailed in the Cold War “red scare.” He served three years at Terre Haute Penitentiary and was released in 1956.

After his release from prison, Christoffel worked as an electrical contractor and though he didn't return to Allis-Chalmers, kept his eye on the activities of Local 248, which had never fully regained its momentum after the strike of 1946-1947. Later in life Christoffel and the Local 248 would become the subject of many articles and books on labor history; he also became active in labor history groups and participated in the Wisconsin Historical Society's Wisconsin Labor Oral History Project.

Harold Christoffel died on March 23, 1991, in Oconomowoc.

The materials in the collection date roughly from 1937 to 1990, with the bulk of the materials documenting the period between 1946 and 1950. The major focus of the collection is Christoffel's defense against perjury charges after stating in front of the House Education and Labor Committee that he was not a Communist in hearings conducted to investigate the Local 248 strike of 1946-1947. The materials document the formation and activities of the Harold Christoffel Defense Committee, as well as defense proceedings and correspondence concerning day-to-day legal matters. Also documented are the strike activities of Local 248, as well as a union history up to 1946 and by-laws recorded while Christoffel was still president of the union. The collection consists of subject files, publications and pamphlets, correspondence, articles, loose news clippings, nine scrapbooks of organized news clippings, bound testimonies, and a DVD recording.

The materials in this collection are divided into four series, the first three being LOCAL 248 UNION MATERIALS, DEFENSE PAPERS, and PERSONAL PAPERS. The fourth series, VISUAL MATERIALS, consists of one DVD film. Christoffel's original filing system is largely intact. Due to the inextricable links between his union activities, defense trials, and personal interests, researchers may need to look in more than one series for information.

The LOCAL 248 UNION MATERIALS consists of four headings: General, Grievances and Rulings, Newspaper clippings, and Scrapbooks. The General heading includes materials relating to the history and organization of Local 248, including a History of Local 248 authored by Christoffel, Local 248 by-laws, several hundred pages of polling lists that act as a membership roster for 1946, and an account of the 1947 Local 248 strike. Grievances and Rulings contain bound volumes of grievances and referee rulings, as well as bound copies of documents studying the union's demands. Newspaper clippings cover union activities from 1941-1948, and Scrapbooks contains nine scrapbooks of chronologically ordered news clippings relating to the formation of Local 248 and the strikes of 1939, 1941, and 1946-1947. Aside from the scrapbooks and news clippings, little documentation of Local 248 as a fraternal and labor organization exists in this series.

The DEFENSE PAPERS encompass the records that Christoffel kept pertaining to his perjury trial defense. This series includes four headings: Defense correspondence, Harold Christoffel Defense Committee, Newspaper clippings, and Testimonies and Statements. Defense correspondence contains letters between Christoffel, his lawyers, and various judicial offices in the course of information request and provision that occurs during a trial. Researchers should note that in the course of correspondence, legal documents pertaining to the perjury cases were attached and are included in this file along with relevant correspondence. Harold Christoffel Defense Committee documents the formation of the committee, including correspondence within Local 248 and with other unions around the state and the country seeking support for the Defense Fund. Defense Fund account statements document expenses paid out and donations received between 1948 and 1953. Four receipt books document who donated money to the Fund between 1948 and 1950. Two trade union directories are annotated by Christoffel and include lists of contacts in New York State and nationally. Also included are press releases, newsletters, and advertisements funded by the Defense Committee to keep benefactors apprised of events, as well as to recruit new support. Newspaper clippings cover material from several local and national papers that followed the Christoffel trial and Local 248 activity during the time period. Testimonies and Statements include depositions, testimonies, and statements given by major and minor players in the perjury trial, including Christoffel, Robert Buse, R.J. Thomas, O. John Rogge, and Harold W. Story; these testimonies record both prosecution and defense witnesses. In addition to legal statements are several hundred questionnaires about Harold Christoffel and his alleged Communist activities administered to members of Local 248.

The PERSONAL PAPERS consist of six headings: the Army File, Biographical Materials and Research, Correspondence, Notebook of religious studies, the Prison File, and Speeches and Writings. The Army File includes materials Christoffel kept from his time in the Army, including training certificates, soldier pay records, and draft and discharge papers. Biographical Materials and Research contain materials that Christoffel kept regarding his personal interests and research in his post-union days, including economic democracy, his attempts to gain access to his records using the Freedom of Information Act, correspondence and transcripts relating to an interview he gave to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Fromkin Memorial Collections, information on union films shown by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, activities in the Wisconsin Historical Society Labor History Project, and correspondence and information about the Wisconsin Historical Society. Researchers should note that information obtained from the Freedom of Information Act contains many legal briefs and prosecution correspondence that was unavailable to Christoffel and his defense team at the time of his trial. Correspondence includes general correspondence with family and friends, with two files devoted specifically to Shel Schendel and H. Gunnar Mickelson, old friends from union days. The Notebook includes handwritten notes about religion and religious studies. The Prison File consists of materials from Christoffel's time spent in prison, including bond receipts, probation reports, correspondence, and handwritten notes from coursework. Speeches and Writings contain handwritten and typewritten speeches as well as unpublished written works. Some of these materials are annotated and were presumably written by Christoffel in preparation for union rallies and meetings.

VISUAL MATERIALS includes one DVD recording of an approximately 25-minute film about the history of labor organizations in Milwaukee. The original film date is not known but appears to be circa 1980. Harold Christoffel was interviewed for the film about the Local 248 Allis-Chalmers strikes of 1941 and 1946-1947.

Acquisition Information

Presented by Nancy Liljequist and Tom Christoffel, December 2007. Accession Number: M2008-009

Processing Information

Processed by Lisa Muccigrosso (Practicum student), May 2008.

Mss 1046	Series: Local 248 Union Materials
	General
Box   1 Folder   1	History of Local 248, 1946
Box   1 Folder   2	Local 248 by-laws, undated
Box   1 Folder   3-5	Polling lists, 1946 July
Box   1 Folder   6	“The 1947 AC Strike,” undated
	Grievances and Rulings
Box   1 Folder   7-8	1941
Box   2 Folder   1-2	1941-1942
	Comparative study of 1942 demands of Local 248
Box   2 Folder   3	Documents I-III, V-XXIII
Box   2 Folder   4	Document IV
	Newspaper clippings
Box   2 Folder   5	1941-1948
	Scrapbooks
Box   10	1939-1942 March
Box   11	1941 January-March
Box   12	1941 March-April
Box   13	1946 February-September
Box   14	1946 September-November
Box   15	1946 November-December
Box   16	1946 December-1947 February
Box   17	1947 March-June
Box   18	1947 March-December
	Series: Defense Papers	⇧
	Defense correspondence
Box   3 Folder   1-6	1947-1956
	Harold Christoffel Defense Committee
Box   3 Folder   7	Correspondence, 1947-1956
Box   4 Folder   1-2	Correspondence, 1947-1956 (continued)
Box   4 Folder   3	Letters, 1948
	Donations and expenses
Box   4 Folder   4-5	Defense fund account statements, 1948-1953
Box   4 Folder   6	Directory of Local Unions, UAW-CIO, 1947
Box   4 Folder   7	New York Trade Union Directory, 1948
Box   4 Folder   8	Receipt book, 1948 July 6-1949 March 25
Box   5 Folder   1-3	Receipt books, 1949 April 4-1950 May 25
Box   5 Folder   4	Press releases, newsletters, and advertisements, 1947-1949
	Newspaper clippings
Box   5 Folder   5-6	1947-1956
	Testimonies and Statements
Box   5 Folder   7-8	Amendments to the National Labor Relations Act; Hearings before the House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor, 80th Congress, First Session: Robert Buse; R.J. Thomas; Harold Christoffel, 1947 March 1
Box   6 Folder   1	Appeal Brief, Harold R. Christoffel vs. United States of America, No. 11, 852, undated
Box   6 Folder   2	Blair, Fred Bassett and Sigmund Eisenscher, 1947 July 8
Box   6 Folder   3-5	Congressional Hearing on Communistic Influences in Labor, 1947 March 17-19
Box   6 Folder   6	Costello, Emil, 1947 June 27
Box   6 Folder   7	Joint Statement of A.K. Britnall, K.W. Haagensen, E.F. Ohrman, J.L. Waddleton, and Harold W. Story before the House Education and Labor Committee, 1947 February 24
Box   6 Folder   8	Questionnaire about Harold Christoffel and Communism given to members of Local 248, 1948
Box   7 Folder   1	Rogge, O. John, undated
Box   7 Folder   2	Testimony before the House Education and Labor Committee, 1947 March 1 and 3 Scope and Content Note Robert Buse, March 1, 1947 R.J. Thomas, March 1, 1947 Harold Christoffel, March 3, 1947
Box   7 Folder   3	Transcript changes, Hearings before the House Education and Labor Committee, 1947 March 1 and 3
Box   7 Folder   4	United States of America vs. Harold Roland Christoffel, 1947 July 23
Box   7 Folder   5	Witness lists, 1947
	Series: Personal Papers	⇧
	Army File
Box   7 Folder   6	Correspondence, 1943-1946
Box   7 Folder   7	General materials, 1944-1946
	Newsletters
Box   7 Folder   8	Depot Digest, 1946 May-August
Box   7 Folder   9	Rensselaer Recorder, 1946 September
	Biographical Materials and Research
Box   7 Folder   10	Economic democracy, undated
Box   7 Folder   11-12	Freedom of Information Act-Patti Goldman, 1986-1988
Box   8 Folder   1	Freedom of Information Act-Patti Goldman, 1986-1988 (continued)
	University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Box   8 Folder   2	Interview correspondence, 1987
Box   8 Folder   3	Interview transcript, 1987
Box   8 Folder   4	Union films, 1980-1981
Box   8 Folder   5	Wisconsin Historical Society, 1966-1990
Box   8 Folder   6	Wisconsin Historical Society Labor History Project, 1982-1990
	Correspondence
Box   8 Folder   7	General, 1941-1985
Box   8 Folder   8	Mickelson, H. Gunnar, 1978-1985
Box   8 Folder   9	Schendel, Shel, 1980-1987
	Notebook of religious studies
Box   9 Folder   1	Notes, undated
	Prison File
Box   9 Folder   2	General materials, 1945-1957
Box   9 Folder   3-5	Course notes, 1954-1955
	Speeches and Writings
Box   9 Folder   6	Miscellaneous, undated
	Series: Visual Materials	⇧
VDA 001	“Who Payed [sic] the Dues?” DVD, circa 1980 Scope and Content Note: DVD recording of an approximately 25-minute film covering the history of organized labor in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Harold Christoffel is interviewed about the Allis-Chalmers strikes of 1941 and 1946-1947.