National Affairs: SIX FOR THE KENNEDY CABINET

• Share

(4 of 7)

The last of eight children of a Russian immigrant family, Goldberg grew up on Chicago's West Side, went to work as a delivery boy in a shoe factory (for $3.80 a week) at the age of twelve, and won his law degree at Northwestern University at 20. He argued his own case so beguilingly before the state Supreme Court that the rules were suspended and he was permitted to take his bar examinations before his 21st birthday.

At first, Goldberg was a young corporation lawyer, but after representing the Newspaper Guild in a strike against Hearst in 1938, he became a labor specialist. (During the war he served with distinction as the OSS contact with Europe's underground labor movement.) In 1948 Goldberg committed himself to the labor movement when the late Phil Murray made him general counsel of the Steelworkers' union. At the wedding of the A.F.L. and the C.I.O. in 1955, he was one of the main marriage brokers. Since then, he has become special counsel (and ex officio policy adviser) to the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and on occasion has worn the legal wigs of a dozen big member unions as well.

His many legal chores for the labor movement have paid him handsomely: Goldberg makes more than $100,000 a year, keeps an interest in his Chicago law firm, owns part of a Caribbean hotel chain. Before he takes the oath of office, though, he plans to drop all of his labor affiliations, just as business executives sell their stocks on entering the Cabinet. In addition, he promises never to return to the labor field after his Government service.

Goldberg might very well bring Government into labor disputes more quickly than did his predecessor and close friend, Secretary James Mitchell. But Goldberg claims to have no illusions about the divine rights of the workingman. "What is obviously called for," he told the National Association of Manufacturers last fortnight, "is a greater recognition between management and labor in America of mutuality of interests." In practice, however, Goldberg's interests have been plainly on the side of strengthening big labor.

A smallish, owlish man, Goldberg is as alert as a chipmunk, packs an astonishing amount of stamina and energy (in the thick of marathon negotiations, he switches from Sanka to coffee). Although his manner is amiable, he is as tough as whip leather at the bargaining table.

Jack and Bobby Kennedy, from their vantage point on the McClellan labor-management investigating committee, got to know Goldberg for his personally led fights to expel the Teamsters and other unsavory unions from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. During the campaign he was a natural choice as a top labor adviser on the Kennedy team, and last week, when George Meany presented a list of five names of top A.F.L.-C.I.O. men as possibilities, the President-elect rejected them all to pick Arthur Goldberg as his personal choice.

SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE