The Papers of Robert A. Taft, Svazek 3

This third volume in the series documents Robert A. Taft's experiences through World War II and his early postwar years. After winning a tough reelection battle as senator from Ohio in 1944, Taft moved steadily upward in the leadership ranks of his party and assumed a preeminent position among the bipartisan group of conservatives that increasingly dominated Congress. Taft was most widely known for his leadership of the postwar effort to revise federal labor law. In 1947 he cosponsored the Taft-Hartley Act, the single most important piece of labor legislation passed in the aftermath of World War II. These amendments to the 1935 National Labor Relations Act defined unfair union practices, banned closed shops, and authorized court injunctions that would delay strikes that harmed national security by imposing an eighty-day cooling-off period. In the immediate postwar years Taft recognized the need for federal aid to education, social welfare legislation that assisted the poor, and federal support for public housing. The senator campaigned vigorously for education-assistance legislation (which failed to pass the House of Representatives) and cosponsored the Taft-Wagner-Ellender Housi