The C.I.O.'s United Auto Workers, once the nation's biggest, healthiest union, was in deep trouble. Its inter-union political warfare, fed by the bitter, bloody, still-unsettled Allis-Chalmers strike (TIME, Nov. u), had reached the point where left-backed Vice President R. J. Thomas and right-wing President Walter Reuther were calling each other union wreckers.
Then came Treasurer George F. Addes with his annual report. U.A.W.'s war chest, he reported, had skidded into the red from a $2 million backlog on V-E day. The union was now "barely able to keep its head above water with increased dues from its decreased peacetime membership. And...
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