Advance, Cornell ILR School's publication for alumni and friends.
Issue link: https://advance.epubxp.com/i/429746
undergraduates — all transfer students — and 11 graduate students. More than half of the enrollees were World War II veterans. Cornell, celebrating its sesqui- centennial as ILR marks its 70 th anniversary, was an 80-year- old institution when the new school opened in borrowed classrooms in Warren Hall on the Ag Quad. In 1946, ILR moved into Quonset huts on what is now the Engineering Quad. That same year, Ives resigned as dean to run for a U.S. Senate seat, which he won. 2 he rich history of the ILR School, shaping labor-management values and impacting lives right from its start, is tied to the social, eco- nomic and political landscapes of the Great Depression. That's when people — in- cluding U.S. Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, who later taught at ILR — helped lead the nation into New Deal-era workplace change. New laws included the Fair Labor Stan- dards Act, securing wages and hours, and the National Labor Relations Act, protecting workers' rights to organize. Laws were not enough, feared many, expecting labor-man- agement rancor and wide- spread strikes to resume when World War II troops returned to stateside jobs. Irving Ives, raised in Chenango County and schooled at Ham- ilton College — both in rural upstate New York — was among those who believed that a thriving American workplace going forward demanded education on workplace rights and respon- sibilities of both employees and employers. A Cornell school would help lead them, thought Ives in the 1930s, when he began serving as a New York state assemblyman. Coached in the ways of labor by George Meany, president of the New York State Feder- ation of Labor, and identifed for his leadership potential by William B. Groat, a Queens lawyer and political insider, Ives also won the trust of Cornell President Edmund Ezra Day. The idea of an educational institution devoted to labor and industrial relations was controversial within the labor movement, Albany political circles and Cornell, which bid against Union College and Syracuse University for hosting rights. In 1944, seven years after Ives started building buy-in for the school, state legislators cre- ated the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Ives was named to lead the school, and Jean McKelvey and Maurice Neufeld were appointed the frst members of a world- class faculty whose scholar- ship and teaching continue to shape societal values. On Nov. 2, 1945, ILR held its frst classes with 107 A D r e a m U n f o l d s T Photos left to right: Maurice Neufeld with steelworkers, Judge William Groat with Irving M. Ives and Louis Hollander, Jean McKelvey, state legislators who recommended school's creation.