TLS as president, one page, 6.75 x 8.75, White House letterhead, April 6, 1951. Letter to Attorney General J. Howard McGrath. In full: “I understand that, pursuant to my previous directions that all appropriate action should be taken to assert and maintain the Government’s rights as owner of the stock of American President Lines which has been involved in litigation in the District of Columbia, suit was instituted, at your direction, by the United States in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California to secure a judicial determination of the rights of the United States as owner of this stock. It is my wish that you continue to prosecute this suit, on behalf of the United States, so that the rights of the United States, which have not been adjudicated in the previous litigation, may be fully protected, and that you take all appropriate steps in the California suit to vindicated and assert all rights of the United States.” Scattered creases and a rusty paperclip mark to the upper left, otherwise fine condition.
American President Lines began as the Dollar Steamship Company, founded by Robert Dollar in 1900 as a trans-Pacific shipping company; by the early 1920s, it had grown into one of the most powerful forces in international shipping. Dollar continued to expand his fleet, adding seven ex-WWI '502 President type' liners in 1923—purchased from the US Shipping Board—and eight more two years later. However, the firm's profitability came to a halt with two blows: first the stock market crash, which devastated international commerce, and then Dollar's death in 1932, which left the company in the hands of his less-savvy son. By 1938 it was drowning in debt, and the US Maritime Commission assumed control to prevent the line's bankruptcy. The most visible change was in the name, the company reemerging as American President Lines. This acquisition proved important a few years later during World War II, when the entirety of the fleet's operations was directed toward transporting soldiers to the warfront overseas. At the war's conclusion in 1945, R. Stanley Dollar—the same son who had previously run the line aground—filed a lawsuit in an attempt to force the return of the company, which by then held $40 million in assets, to the ownership of his family. After a legal battle that lasted years, the government was ordered to turn over their shares to the Dollars; however Secretary of Commerce Charles W. Sawyer refused, and on the date of this letter was cited for contempt. Ultimately, an agreement was reached in 1952 wherein the company was sold to another party for $18 million, with Dollar receiving a portion. In all, the ‘Dollar Case’ was one of the most controversial legal proceedings of the era and helped to define the relationship between government and industry for years to come. Pre-certified John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA and RR Auction COA.
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