Background
He left school at age 12 to work as a stock boy at Sprague Electrical Works, which was acquired by General Electric, taking night classes and working up to president in 1939. During World War II he served on the War Production Board as executive vice-chairman in September 1942, supervising the huge U.S. military production effort before resigning in August, 1944 after a bitter jurisdictional dispute with the military. After returning to General Electric and instituting an anti-union campaign, he served President Truman as the chairman of the blue-ribbon President's Committee on Civil Rights in 1946-1947, which recommended new civil rights legislation to protect "all parts of our population".
Read more about this topic: Charles E. Wilson
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
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“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)