<--PREV Doc #1290  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #1292 Document #1291; August 14, 1959 To Charles S. Jones Series: EM, WHCF, Official File 124 The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XX - The Presidency: Keeping the Peace Part VII: Berlin and the Chance for a Summit; March 1959 to August 1959 Chapter 18: "These extremist approaches"   Dear Charlie: Your telegram was on my desk this morning when I arrived at my office (incidently, after a sparkling round of golf with Pete, Cliff and Bill Robinson). Thank you so much.1 The final labor bill must of course await the action of the conference committee, but we are hopeful it will come out of conference in substantially the same form as the Landrum-Griffin bill passed yesterday by the House.2 At any rate, we have made a good start toward a real reform bill. You know, of course, that the four of us are here in Gettysburg, with golf and bridge the order of the day (and as a sobering influence, a little paper work each day for me). I hope the others are having as good a time as I am, and I only wish you were in the vicinity to join us. With warm regard, As ever P.S. What is this outlandish story about Freeman Gosden?3 If true he must be insufferable. 1 Jones’s August 13 telegram congratulating the President on the passage in the House of Representatives of anti-corruption labor legislation is in the same file as the document. For background see nos. 536 and 897. For Eisenhower’s address to the nation calling for an effective labor bill see Public Papers of the Presidents: Eisenhower, 1959, pp. 567 - 71. Eisenhower’s Gettysburg vacation would last from August 11 through August 18. On this day he had played golf with friends W. Alton "Pete" Jones, William Robinson, and Clifford Roberts. 2 On August 14, 1959, the House of Representatives had passed H.R. 8342, the Landrum-Griffin Labor Reform bill. The vote represented a major victory for the Eisenhower Administration, which had sought to stiffen the labor legislation originally introduced in the Senate by Massachusetts Democrat John F. Kennedy. The new law closed the "no-man’s land" gap in the Taft-Hartley Act (see no. 905) by letting states take jurisdiction over interstate commerce labor disputes that the National Labor Relations Board would not handle. It also increased restrictions on secondary boycotts and imposed new curbs on certain types of union picketing (see Congressional Quarterly Almanac, vol. XV, 1959, pp. 156 - 72; New York Times, Aug. 14, 15, 1959; see also Eisenhower, Waging Peace, pp. 388 - 89; and Lee, Eisenhower and Landrum-Griffin). The final version of the legislation as agreed to by Congress in early September would mirror the House bill, except for a few minor changes. Eisenhower would sign the bill into law on September 14. 3 On Gosden’s hole-in-one see no. 1313. Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. To Charles S. Jones , 14 August 1959. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 1291. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/second-term/documents/1291.cfm <--PREV Doc #1290  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #1292

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