After General Electric was forced to settle with its workers following a bitter and protracted strike in 1946, the company's executives appointed a man named Lemuel Ricketts Boulware to head employee relations. Boulware took on the cause of fighting the union with righteous zeal. Under his guidance, GE managers were given long reading lists that included the National Review, The Wall Street Journal, and conservative economics textbooks, and all employees were expected to complete a course on free-market economics, leading the company's own publicist to describe GE as "obsessed with conservatism." Boulware's remorseless negotiating tactics yielded results when the next strike, in 1960, saw a weakened union brought to its knees within two weeks. But perhaps Boulware's greatest legacy is the influence he had on the fading Hollywood actor and future president who had accepted a position as the public face of GE in 1954. Biography: Kim Phillips-Fein is an assistant professor at New York University's Gallatin School. She has written for The Nation, The Baffler, and many other publications. She lives in New York City.