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Law Career	Firestone    Private Practice    Public Politics    Fighting the Klan    C & S Corp.

   After leaving the Army in February 1918, Willkie briefly considered careers in teaching and politics. He decided to continue his legal career, however, and in May 1919 he settled into the life of a company lawyer in the legal department of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio. Willkie rose to prominence in Akron, where he was known for being a hard-working and talented lawyer, and an eloquent and popular public speaker. In his 10 years in Akron, Willkie also became involved in numerous civic issues and public policy debates that affected the city. Willkie biographers note that Akron was where Willkie “came of age” and that his time there was critical to his intellectual, political and personal development.

   Before moving to Ohio, Willkie first declined an offer to become a candidate for U.S. Representative from Elwood’s congressional district. The leader of the Madison County Democratic Party extended to Willkie the opportunity to become the party’s candidate, but Willkie turned him down in part because of the difficulties a Democrat would face in this traditionally conservative district. Moreover, Willkie was cash poor and he needed a job quickly. With the help of a family friend, Willkie got a job in the legal department of Firestone, where he provided free legal advice to any company employee requesting it.

   Willkie’s job was monotonous, however, and it did not make full use of his legal skills. His days were filled with managing mundane legal matters such as drafting wills, writing letters to creditors trying to garnish an employee’s wages and defending employees in lawsuits, usually involving paltry sums. Although Willkie took some of the lawsuits to court, he found the court room experiences unsatisfying: they were far from giving him the intellectual stimulation and drama that he craved. In the office, Willkie’s tasks were equally routine; he later estimated that he had drafted several thousand wills while working for Firestone.

   It was an easy job for a skilled lawyer to excel at, and Willkie’s good performance was rewarded with several increases in salary. And in late 1920, when Willkie was tempted by an offer from a private Akron law firm, Firestone proposed to increase Willkie’s salary to $10,000 a year. This was a tremendous increase, as Willkie’s starting salary was just $2,500 merely a year and a half earlier. Even that was not enough to keep him at Firestone, and he resigned from the company on December 31, 1920, to join the Mather and Nesbitt law firm.

   Although Mather and Nesbitt would pay Willkie less than Firesone’s last offer, Willkie had also received a promise from the firm to make him a partner if he proved satisfactory during a brief probationary period. Willkie successfully completed his probation and the firm was renamed Mather, Nesbitt and Willkie.

As attorney with Mather, Nesbitt and Willkie (age 37)

   The firm represented many Akron businesses, most notably the major power supplier for the region, the Northern Ohio Traction and Light Company. This power company also operated Akron’s streetcars, and many of Willkie’s early cases for the firm involved defending the company in lawsuits brought by people claiming to have been injured by its streetcars. These cases represented Willkie’s first involvement with power companies, a connection that would continue for the next 20 years of his career.

   Willkie’s frequent courtroom appearances and his high profile in Akron legal circles earned him the respect of his peers. In early 1925, when Willkie was just 33 years old, his peers elected him president of the Akron Bar Association. Within two months of his election, Willkie took on a case that would raise his profile even higher. In May 1925, Willkie took the case of William Kroeger, who had been sued by Firestone, Akron’s largest business and Willkie’s former employer. The suit arose out of a dispute over the ownership of about $70,000 of Firestone stock. Because the suit personally involved Harvey Firestone Sr., public interest in the case was high. Both sides battled outside the courtroom for a year, with Firestone eventually settling with Kroeger before the case went to court, where it was clear to all parties that Kroeger would win decisively.

   Willkie’s active legal career suited his two other major interests while in Akron: public speaking and party politics. Willkie became Commander of the Akron-area American Legion Post in mid 1921, and it was from this association that he first became in demand as a public speaker. At first, his speeches were of the sort expected from a war veteran and American Legion member: he was asked to make speeches on patriotic topics on occasions such as the Fourth of July, Washington’s birthday, Lincoln’s birthday and Armistice Day. Typical organizations inviting Willkie to speak were the Rotary Club, the Kiwanis Club and the Knights of Columbus. Willkie’s reputation as a high-quality speaker grew rapidly, and he soon began to expand the number of topics he would speak about. As his confidence in public speaking grew, he would often accept a speaking engagement without even knowing what topic he was to talk about and without knowing the audience. Willkie’s lifelong love of reading books on just about any topic enabled him to speak extemporaneously on a wide variety of subjects.

   Willkie was also very active in the local Democratic Party and in particular a group called the “Young Men’s Democratic Club.” One of Willkie’s favorite activities for the Democratic Club was to make speeches advocating greater American involvement in the league of Nations. These efforts boosted Willkie’s profile in the local Democratic Party and in 1924 he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in New York City, where he worked to nominate Newton Baker, Secretary of War in the Wilson administration. When it was clear that Baker would not be nominated, Willkie intensified his efforts to get two resolutions into the party platform: one condemning the Ku Klux Klan and another endorsing the League of Nations (one of Baker’s favorite issues).

   Word of Willkie’s anti-Klan activities got back to the Akron KKK and they sent him a telegram blasting him for having “joined the payroll of the Pope.” Willkie was short of funds, but he still wanted to respond to the telegram, so he sent a six-word reply: “The Klan can go to hell.” In the end, however, Willkie was unsuccessful on both of his platform battles, although he said that the bitter and very public battle over the Klan led to its “absolute repudiation” by the convention. “The fact that the resolution [condemning the Klan] was defeated by one vote means that the Klan was absolutely exposed.” One other significant event of the convention was the presence of Willkie’s future presidential opponent, Franklin Roosevelt, who gave a well-received nominating speech for Al Smith. In addition, the large New York state delegation, led by Roosevelt, argued vigorously against the party’s endorsement of the League of Nations. Many years later, when he was opposing Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation, Willkie said that his distrust of Roosevelt began when he failed to support the League at the 1924 convention.

   The Ku Klux Klan today is a much different organization than it was in Willkie’s day. Then, the Klan was a real and frightening presence in local and state politics, and not just in the southern states. In fact, the Klan was particularly strong in the Midwest, and especially so in Indiana and Ohio, where Willkie had spent most of his life so far. Klan members ran for local political offices, some openly flaunting their Klan affiliation, and often won elections by fanning the flames of fear and prejudice. When not elected to offices, Klan members still exerted a powerful influence on local politicians, who had to appease them as they would any other powerful special interest group. Willkie, fresh from his confrontation with the Klan at the 1924 convention, returned to Akron to fight the Klan over control of the Board of Education.

   In early 1925, three of the seven Board members resigned, saying that the president and three other Board members were in the Klan or at least taking orders from the Klan. In response, Akron citizens, Willkie included, formed a “Committee of One Hundred” to recruit and promote non-Klan candidates to run in the November election. Willkie’s prominence in the community and his superior oratorical skills made him a natural spokesman for the group. When three of the group’s four candidates won in the November election, it marked the beginning of the end of the Klan’s influence in Akron politics.

   Willkie’s repudiation of the Klan, both at the 1924 convention and during the 1925 election in Akron, were the first public manifestations of his commitment to civil rights and civil liberties, two commitments that would emerge in greater force later in his political career and would stay with him the rest of his life. In his Willkie biography, Barnes sums up Willkie’s Akron experience thusly:  “Willkie’s ten years in Akron were decisive years in the development of all his later thinking. They forced no break with the ideas he had taken there with him from an immigrant family in Indiana. They reinforced many of them.” Indeed, while Willkie was fighting the Klan in Akron, his father was doing the same in Elwood.

   While participating in all these activities, Willkie of course continued his work as a partner in his law firm. More and more, his workload involved the corporate affairs of utility companies. The firm’s biggest client, now renamed the Northern Ohio Power and Light Company, appointed Willkie to its Board of Directors. In 1929, the company merged with the Commonwealth & Southern corporation, an electric utility holding company with offices in New York City. Holding companies such as the C & S were essentially umbrella organizations linking together smaller electric companies into large and powerful organizations. Through tremendously complicated ownership structures (created to obstruct regulation by the government), a holding company’s board of directors could gain control over several power companies. Thus, they could dictate the conditions under which large sections of the country would receive their electricity and they had virtually unchecked power to set the price of that electricity. Some holding companies were also built on unstable pyramid schemes, which sometimes collapsed, prompting calls for tighter regulation.

   This was the state of the utility industry in 1929, when Willkie was asked by the president of C & S to move to New York City and join forces with another C & S attorney, Judge John Weadcock, and operate as the company’s legal counsel. Although the offer included a lucrative $36,000 salary, it caused Willkie a great deal of anguish because he was reluctant to leave the comfortable and high-profile lifestyle he had established in Akron. Willkie’s hesitation over the offer resulted from his worry that he could not adapt to the ruthless and rootless New York City lifestyle. Ultimately, however, advice from his friends convinced him that he would never be happy unless he was somewhere that offered new and constantly changing challenges. And so in October 1929, Willkie moved his family to New York City and began the phase of his career that thrust him into the national spotlight -- a spotlight that ultimately gave him the opportunity to run for the highest office in the nation.

WORLD WAR I

LAW CAREER

NEW DEAL CRITIC

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Original content Copyright © 1999-2002    Timothy D. Walker    Your  comments  are appreciated
Willkie campaign button courtesy of  Stephen Cresswell
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