Joseph Paul St. Sure's ideology incorporated many of the ideas that Mills' sociological model identified as those belonging to sophisticated conservatives. This ideological base developed during the early years of his career and by the mid-1940s became the guiding force in St. Sure's work in the field of labor management negotiating. In order to trace St. Sure's ideological evolution one must examine his family background, especially the life and resulting influence of his father Adolphus Frederick St. Sure.

Adolphus Frederick St. Sure

Gold brought many people to California in the second half of the nineteenth century, including the St. Sure Family. Joseph Paul St. Sure's grandfather, Franklin Adolph, migrated to California as a merchant late in 1869. Like many Civil War veterans St. Sure, a Confederate veteran and staunch Democrat, moved west in the aftermath of the war. Departing his father's home of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, with his wife Ellen Mary Donaghue, and sons Franklin and Adolphus, the family set out for the California gold country. Settling in Oroville, California, St. Sure set up shop as a druggist catering to the gold dredging miners in the area. Shortly after the family's arrival in California the eldest son, Franklin, died leaving the St. Sure's with their infant son Adolphus Frederick. Born March 9, 1869 in Sheboygan shortly before the family's migration to California, Adolphus was thrust into the role of family provider in 1881 when his father mysteriously drowned. Forced to drop out of grammar school, Adolphus began working as a printer's devil at the Oroville Mercury . Over the next few years he graduated first to typesetter and then to printer. Through these jobs, Adolphus told his sons, he learned his spelling and grammar. By the late 1880s he worked his way up to reporter and then assistant editor for the Mercury.¹⁰

Growing tired of small town life Adolphus St. Sure moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1891, and settled in the growing city of Alameda. Nestled between the bay and rolling hills of the area Alameda proved to be the transition St. Sure needed. Across the bay from San Francisco, it possessed many of the small town characteristics similar to Oroville; however, its close proximity to San Francisco allowed St. Sure the big city outlet he desired to further his newspaper career. Adolphus St. Sure worked first for the San Francisco Call and then for the Examiner as the Alameda city correspondent.

As city correspondent Adolphus St. Sure developed an interest in Alameda politics. In 1892 he ran for Justice of the Peace. Although he lost to the Republican candidate, his showing as a young conservative Democrat in a Republican community proved successful, for when an opening in the City Recorder's Court became available the Board of Supervisor's appointed St. Sure as the replacement.

Although this post did not require previous judicial experience or legal training, St. Sure determined that it was improper for him to remain in office without some knowledge of the law. For the next three years he studied law, and in 1895 he passed the bar exam. Concurrent to his several successive terms in the City Recorder's Court and subsequent to his passage of the bar exam St. Sure joined the general law practice of Tirey Ford in San Francisco. In the wake of the 1906 earthquake St. Sure transferred his law practice to Oakland. Located across the Bay and adjacent to Alameda, Oakland was quickly developing into the East Bay's central city. As a resident of Alameda St. Sure won election to the City Attorney post in 1910. During his eight year tenure as Alameda's City Attorney he developed the community's first city manager charter.¹¹

Adolphus St. Sure developed lasting friendships with many leading Bay Area citizens. Perhaps the most important of these friendships was with Joseph R. Knowland, an independently wealthy man, who was active in politics. However, unlike St. Sure, Knowland was a conservative Republican. Despite differing political affiliations at the onset of their friendship, the two became close friends, each helping the other advance their careers.

As campaign manager for Knowland's successful bids to the State Assembly, State Senate, and United States Senate, St. Sure grew tired of the press referring to him as the conservative Democrat who supported the conservative Republican. Early in the second decade of the twentieth century he officially changed his loyalty to the conservative faction of the Republican party. This political switch can be characterized more as a simple formality than any sweeping ideological change. Adolphus St. Sure's political ideology had always been conservative. The "Democratic" conservatism which St. Sure adhered to was very similar to the "Republican" conservatism that Knowland followed. The same moral convictions that prompted St. Sure to become a lawyer after his election to the City Recorder's Court prompted him to formally switch political parties.¹²

Patronage also characterized the relationship between Joseph Knowland and Adolphus St. Sure. Shortly after Knowland's 1914 reelection loss to Jim Phelan for the United States Senate Knowland retired from politics and bought the financially troubled Oakland Tribune. In 1922 Sam Shortridge, running for a second term in the United States Senate, went to Adolphus St. Sure and requested that he persuade Knowland to increase the Tribune's support for his campaign. Tribune support up to that point had been indifferent because of Shortridge's wavering loyalty to the conservative faction of the Republican party. Following an earlier election in which Knowland defeated Shortridge for the Republican nomination, Shortridge threw his support to the Progressive candidate, greatly offending Knowland and other conservative Republicans. This incident was not forgotten by Knowland and upon his acquisition of the Tribune he resolved that the paper's support of Shortridge's future election bids would be almost non-existent. St. Sure however, convinced Knowland of the importance of Shortridge's reelection to the U.S. Senate and Knowland subsequently agreed to solidly support Shortridge in return for a then unnamed favor for his friend St. Sure. Shortridge won the election and promised to help St. Sure whenever the occasion arose.

The following year, 1923, Shortridge repaid the favor. A seat opened on the United States District Court, and Shortridge nominated St. Sure. At the end of a stop-the-clock session the U.S. Senate approved him. Senate confirmation advanced St. Sure's nomination to the desk of President Calvin Coolidge for final appointment. When the Attorney General Mortimer Stone, later a Supreme Court Justice, objected to St. Sure's appointment because he lacked formal education, both Shortridge and Coolidge were reported to have responded, "Neither am I," in response to Stone's objection that St. Sure was not even a high school graduate. In light of Coolidge's response Stone dropped the objection and St. Sure gained a lifetime appointment to the Federal bench.¹³

In reviewing Adolphus St. Sure's life two dominant ideologies reveal themselves, conviction and conservatism. Both of these ideologies strongly impacted Joseph Paul St. Sure's life. Paul St. Sure remembered the intensity of his father's convictions. Recalling one of his father's standard lectures St. Sure said, "He used to lecture my brother and me that the wisest thing we could do was to learn a trade as he had done -- something that would give us security, which was the one thing that counted."¹⁴ He also recalled the intense political battles, while a youngster, that his father and Joseph Knowland waged against the Progressives Hiram Johnson, Guy Eral, Jack Neylan.

Joseph Paul St. Sure

Joseph Paul St. Sure, born in Alameda, California on July 1, 1902, grew up in an era of many changes in the political atmosphere of both California and the United States. Theodore Roosevelt began his first full year as President vowing to curb the rapid growth of trusts and use the Federal government as an instrument to regulate private business. To reach these ends Roosevelt instructed the Attorney General to use the Sherman Anti-Trust Act on Big Business as the authors of the act had originally intended. Unlike previous administrations, the Roosevelt administration used the act to support unionization. In an unprecedented move, Roosevelt threatened the coal mining interest of J.P. Morgan with government intervention unless he agreed to come to terms with the United Mine Workers grievances, especially the union's desire to abolish Morgan's substandard wage system. Successful in both undertakings, the President laid the foundations for business regulation and union recognition in the future.

While the Federal government under the direction of Theodore Roosevelt was enacting unprecedented reforms, so too were the California Progressives. Between 1900 and 1916 Progressive reforms changed the face of California government. The Progressives concentrated on two main goals. First, dismantling the power of railroad interests in state politics, and second, restricting the power of city bosses in both Los Angeles and San Francisco. Progressives succeeded on both counts, reaching their pinnacle of power in 1910 with the election of Hiram Johnson as Governor. Johnson revolutionized California government. His six years in office curbed the political power of big business, in turn fostering the development of a modern state government. Through the referendum, recall, and initiative processes ordinary citizens finally gained a political voice.¹⁵

Coming of age as the wave of Progressivism swept California, Joseph Paul St. Sure began to form his own political impressions. Raised in a strongly conservative household, St. Sure said of his political upbringing:

I just don't have any clear recollection of what made up a conservative or a progressive, except that the Johnson faction were progressive and the Knowland faction were conservative. . . . Political affiliation was a personal thing. Either you knew the people and like them and therefore you trusted them, or you grew up with that inheritance because your father before you had been a Republican, you were one, and you belonged to the same camp and you traveled in the same crowd.¹⁶

St. Sure grew up in the shadow of his father's Republicanism. He followed the same party line, belonged to the same camp, and traveled in the same crowd.

Educated in the Alameda County School System, St. Sure graduated from Alameda High School in 1918, at the age of sixteen. Determined to become a lawyer and practice with his father, he entered the University of California Berkeley's School of Jurisprudence. Active in school affairs while attending Berkeley, St. Sure managed the glee club, taking them on a tour of China, Japan, and the Philippines at the end of his senior year. He also reported for the Daily Cal, in time becoming the editor. The Oakland Tribune also hired him to be the campus correspondent, writing a daily column describing the University's activities.

St. Sure spent five of his six college years at Berkeley. During his first year of graduate work, he "had a little wanderlust," and transferred to the Harvard University law school. After a year at the "finest" law school, and after being informed that a great deal of his undergraduate work was not transferable, he returned to the Berkeley program. The following year, 1924, he graduated with a doctoral degree in law, and immediately began to practice law as a Alameda County District Attorney. In a prearranged agreement between his father, Adolphus St. Sure, and Ezra Decoto, the Alameda County District Attorney and political friend and associate of his father, the young J. Paul St. Sure was guaranteed a job in the District Attorney's office. Just a few hours after his father swore in his graduating class, St. Sure began working as a Deputy District Attorney by appointment of Ezra Decoto.¹⁷

Shortly after appointing St. Sure to the District Attorney's office Decoto became one of Governor Friend Richardson's appointees to the Railroad Commission, now known as the Public Utilities Commission, and subsequently resigned as District Attorney. With Decoto's resignation an intense political battle ensued between the forces of Joseph Knowland and those of Mike Kelly, a City Supervisor and liberal Democrat. Earl Warren, the Knowland faction's preferred choice, was a Deputy District Attorney for Alameda County, and a previous Deputy City Attorney for Oakland. Frank Shay, a Deputy District Attorney like St. Sure and Warren, was the Kelly nominee. St. Sure, a Knowland man like his father, recalled telling Earl Warren, "Either you'll make it or we'll all leave together."18 After heated debate amongst the Knowland and Kelly faction supervisors, Earl Warren was chosen to succeed Decoto as District Attorney in 1925. With Warren's victory St. Sure continued in the District Attorney's office.

On January 16, 1926, Paul St. Sure married Elizabeth Bliss, also of an established Bay Area family. Their first daughter, Ellen, was born in 1929 and their second, Elizabeth, arrived two years later. During St. Sure's tenure in the District Attorney's office he worked closely with Earl Warren, becoming Chief Deputy District Attorney and finally Assistant District Attorney. St. Sure learned a great deal from Earl Warren. He became a skilled lawyer, knowledgeable in law and its procedures. The District Attorney's office was diversified and democratic. Because the office functioned as both a civil and criminal law office, St. Sure and the other lawyers in the office advised various city and county officials while also prosecuting criminal cases. St. Sure worked as a police court prosecutor for Oakland, a general court house lawyer, an advisor to the Board of Supervisors, and as a criminal prosecutor trying felony cases.¹⁹

The benefits of St. Sure's training in the District Attorney's office were revealed later in his private practice. Through his experiences St. Sure learned to deal successfully with individuals when later involved in labor relations. From the management side of the collective bargaining table he was able to see the workers as individuals rather than a commodity like many of the employers he counseled saw them. The breadth of training he received in the District Attorney's office gave him an advantage over other company lawyers who entered managerial employment directly from college. These experiences enable St. Sure to begin developing his keen awareness of the industrial order. St. Sure's ideological base, as characterized by the beliefs of the sophisticated conservative, had begun to develop.

Late in 1929 St. Sure left the District Attorney's office to begin a law practice with Ezra Decoto. His decision to leave the District Attorney's office was threefold. First, he decided that he had been there long enough, and if he had any intentions of becoming the District Attorney there was a long line of successors before him that deserved the position. Second, Earl Warren announced his candidacy for State Attorney General and would be leaving the office. Visualizing the political battle that would develop and knowing he had no political ambitions he decided the time had come to move on. Ezra Decoto, St. Sure's reason for joining the District Attorney's office, also became his motivation for leaving it. With the conclusion of Decoto's appointment to the Railroad Commission he decided to open up a private law practice and asked St. Sure to become his partner. Recognizing the clientele that Decoto's reputation could generate, St. Sure resigned his post in the District Attorney's office to open a law practice with Ezra Decoto.²⁰

St. Sure explained his reasons for not seeking the appointment to the District Attorney's position as follows:

Two things, I think, two real reasons, probably three. . . . One was that I didn't feel that a political life, while it might give you a good living, lead to much more than a salaried position and the necessity of getting re-elected, which didn't appeal to me. I had more ambitious projects in mind from the point of view of being a lawyer. . . .

Secondly, St. Sure did not want to have his career and his life decimated by a change of the political wind. Finally he concluded, "it takes a very strange kind of person to announce that he is the man that the people need…. I just don't think that I could get to that conclusion, that I could make that statement." His objections to running for political office, particularly the District Attorney's office are important in that they also begin to show the growth of his ideology. As the developing sophisticated conservative St. Sure perceived his role as one away from the spotlight. He believed he could make a greater impact advising and working amongst the corporation owners and politicians.²¹

A lack of political ambition notwithstanding, St. Sure's involvement in politics was pervasive. While in the District Attorney's office he became good friends with William Knowland, Joseph Knowland's second son. Like his father, J. Paul St. Sure became William Knowland's campaign manager in his bid for State Assemblyman from the 14th district. The campaign was successful and Knowland was elected to the post in 1932. Two years later, again with St. Sure's guidance, Knowland successfully ran for State Senator. Throughout his career St. Sure also wrote numerous letters of recommendation for his colleagues in their appointment attempts to various posts.²²

Opening their private law practice in Oakland in the midst of the Depression, Decoto and St. Sure took the majority of the business offered them except criminal cases. Although, as St. Sure recalled, a great deal of criminal business came their way because of their previous positions in the District Attorney's office, they decided they had seen enough of the "other side" and did not want to defend criminals. Some of their Depression era work involved the salvaging of clients' businesses in the face of economic decline, and public utility cases. The Pacific Gas and Electric Company hired their firm, based on Decoto's reputation on the Railroad Commission, to be local counsel for their Alameda County dealings. However, the majority of their cases, those that paid the rent as St. Sure recalled, were insurance cases. With their experiences as jury trial lawyers they argued many insurance casualty cases.²³

As a result of his successful law practice and skill in dealing with individuals in the Oakland community, St. Sure became secretary for the California Crime Commission in 1932. The Commission, established by the State Legislature, reviewed the general procedures criminal law and was to recommend any changes it saw appropriate. The part time position paid $250 a month, a substantial supplemental income during the Depression years, and St. Sure was pleased to have the job.

Meeting randomly, St. Sure and the rest of the commission made a few recommendations for procedural change in the criminal code, but overall the commission remained relatively inactive. The position ended, St. Sure recalled, when the State Senate Appropriations Committee eliminated future appropriations. As an employee of the Crime Commission he received an invitation to appear before the appropriations committee and justify the Commission's future, St. Sure advised the Committee that further appropriations for the Crime Commission could not be justified based on its inactivity. Although he testified himself out of a job, like his father, he did not consider it right to receive money for a job not fully performed.²⁴

The Depression rapidly took hold after the stock market crash of 1929. Numerous workers found themselves out a job by 1932. In the first three years of the Depression the United States Steel Corporation discharged 225,000 full-time employees. Other companies were also laying off large portions of their work force, so much so that by 1932 an average of 100,000 people a week lost their job. By year's end an estimated 13 million people were jobless. In 1932 the California Unemployment Commission issued an extensive report on the pervasiveness of the Depression in California. The Commission's investigation into the social price paid by the California citizenry eloquently sums up the effect of the Depression on the entire nation; their conclusions follow:

The study of the human cost of unemployment reveals that a new class of poor and dependents is rapidly rising among the ranks of young, sturdy, ambitious laborers, artisans, mechanics, and professionals, who until recently maintained a relatively high standards of living and were the stable self-respecting citizens and taxpayers of this State. Unemployment and loss of income has created standards of living of which the country cannot be proud. Many households have been dissolved; little children parceled out to friends, relatives, or charitable homes; husbands and wives, parents and children separated, temporarily or permanently. Homes in which life savings were invested and hopes bound up have been lost never to recovered.

The report continues by explaining the conditions that families evicted from homes and forced to take to the road had to endure. The Commission concluded, "The once industrious and resourceful worker becomes pauperized, loses faith in himself and society."²⁵

As economic conditions of the Depression worsened, the newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt embarking on a program of economic recovery, signed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) into law in 1933. This act allowed industry to create codes of fair competition in order to curb the intense competition between companies. The early years of the Depression created an atmosphere of cut-throat competition which drove many companies out of business, it also reduced wages and put many workers out of work.

The NIRA included a section extremely important to the Depression racked labor movement. It acknowledged the legitimacy of labor organization. Section 7(a) provided that all codes of fair competition were to include three conditions regarding labor organizations. First, the codes were required to recognize labor's right to independent organizations. Second, the codes could not require membership in any particular union as a prerequisite to employment. Finally, codes required compliance with maximum hour, minimum wage, and working condition specifications. However, the one problem with this recognition of labor was the failure of the act's authors to provide any mechanisms for enforcement.²⁶

It was during this period and under these conditions that St. Sure and Decoto assisted Oakland employers in the laundry, services, and retail industries to develop fair competition codes as prescribed by the NIRA. As secretary and legal counsel for the trade associations of these respective industries, St. Sure created codes that would essentially maintain prices.²⁷

Section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery act gave new life to floundering union movement. Unions sprang up all over the country in countless industries many of which had never seen organization before. Workers, confident in the government's protection, began to recoup their losses. At the October 1933 convention of the American Federation of Labor, the organization's president William Green informed the delegates that membership had swelled to almost four million, a million and half of which were added in the few short months following the passage of the NIRA.