From Joe to Jim

At a dinner in the high-ceilinged ballroom of Philadelphia's Bellevue-Stratford last week, white-thatched Joseph Ridgway ("Uncle Joe") Grundy resigned at 84 as chairman of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association's executive committee. In Pennsylvania, this could be equaled in news value, if not in importance, only by the resignation of Connie Mack from the Athletics.

Joe Grundy had founded P.M.A. 38 years ago and dedicated it to the principle that what is good for industry and Republicanism is good for the state and the country. To Uncle Joe, who was an industrialist himself (as owner of Grundy woolen mills), political contributions were "investments" which paid off with favorable legislation. At his call, P.M.A. members had contributed untold millions to G.O.P. campaigns.

With the help of P.M.A., Uncle Joe became political boss of Pennsylvania, succeeding bulky, Rabelaisian Boies Penrose. He made Grundyism a common political noun. Grundyism was opposed to unemployment insurance, child labor laws, workmen's compensation, low tariffs, old-age pensions and labor legislation.

But even before Uncle Joe sat down, the diners had been reminded that Grundyism was all but dead & buried. The reminder came from the newly elected Republican Governor, James Henderson Duff, a protege of his predecessor, now U.S. Senator Edward Martin.

The nation's welfare, Governor Duff told them, depends on "an entirely different understanding between labor & management than what has obtained in the immediate past. . . . That means mutual give & take, forbearance and cooperation. . . ." Unaccustomed to such talk, PMAsters uneasily shifted their cigars as Duff warned that they would have to face "such sacrifices of our interests, pecuniary or otherwise, as are definitely necessary . . . for the public interest."

Big Jim Duff had served notice that PMA's Grundyites would have to take him on his own terms, or leave him.

But as long as Uncle Joe could lift a telephone, Grundyism would still have a voice in Pennsylvania. "I'll always want to know what is going on in the attic," said Uncle Joe.

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