Truman nationalizes steel mills

The cherished freedoms of America were hardly guaranteed during wartime – the Habeus Corpus, the writ by which prisoners could challenge their detention as unlawful – was suspended by President Abraham Lincoln, and numerous industries were temporarily nationalized during both the world wars. In that context, after a three-month political battle with the steelworkers’ trade union, President Harry Truman’s act was just another in the line of wartime measures.

On this day, April 8, in 1952, President Truman ordered the Secretary of Commerce to seize and operate most of the country’s steel mills. Somebody, he argued, has to continue the production of wartime material.

Perhaps because Truman was already quite unpopular, his decision was challenged by the mill owners. The case ended up before the United States Supreme Court, which ruled in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer that the president did not have the constitutional power to seize private property.